Millar-Blanchaer
Research Group

Before beginning my PhD I carried out instrumentation research as both an undergraduate summer student and as a research assistant after completion of my undergraduate studies. As a summer student I performed initial design studies for the calibration unit of the first-light adaptive optics system for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), called NFIRAOS (SPIE proceedings). As a research assistant I took part in the early characterization of the image-slicer for the WIFIS integral field spectrograph, and detector characterization for both WIFIS and the NIRES echelle spectrograph at the W.M. Keck Observatory. I also built a differential image motion monitor that I took to the high Canadian Arctic as part of a broader site-testing campaign.