My Research Observatory (MPC R60)

Characterising near-Earth asteroids and timing exoplanet transits need time-critical observations that are hard to secure on shared telescopes. So I researched telescope specifications for precise astrometry and photometry, wrote a research proposal to Japan’s Masason Foundation, and secured equipment donations and discounts from suppliers. In 2025 I set up my remote observatory at a dark-sky site in Nerpio, Spain, and I operate it from Toronto.

Two independent bodies validate its data: the Minor Planet Center assigned it observatory code R60 for astrometry, and ExoClock accepts its transit photometry for ESA’s Ariel mission. I documented the engineering in the August 2026 Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. I write the funding renewal proposal every year, and the observatory’s publication record has secured its operating and maintenance budget for the last two years.

Current Research

Planetary defence. I measure rotation periods and shapes, detect satellite companions, and classify the taxonomy of near-Earth, potentially hazardous, and binary asteroids: the physical parameters that deflection planning depends on. My automated pipeline AT-LAST takes this analysis to survey scale: it recovered 523 high-confidence rotation periods from 5,052 asteroids in the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s first-look and DP2 datasets, agreeing with previously published periods 97% of the time. Before that, my PhAst pipeline fused sparse survey photometry (Gaia, ZTF) with dense light curves, and my photometry of the Didymos–Dimorphos system contributed to measuring the effect of NASA’s DART deflection.

Exoplanets. I refine transit ephemerides for ESA’s Ariel mission through the ExoClock network, and I am a co-author on its catalogue of 620 updated ephemerides in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement. My NEPTUNE pipeline runs N-body simulations of tens of thousands of multi-planet systems to find unseen, non-transiting planets from transit-timing variations.

Artemis II. With Project MOON (MonitorMyMoon.com), I tracked NASA’s Artemis II mission from Toronto using open seismic, infrasound, weather-satellite, and tracking data.

Methods: CCD image calibration and reduction; aperture and differential photometry; Lomb-Scargle, Fourier, and phase dispersion minimisation (PDM) period-finding; light-curve and N-body modelling; MCMC and BIC model selection; Python (NumPy, SciPy, Astropy). All my code is open source at github.com/Spacegirl123.

Publications and Recognition

I have published eight sole-author refereed papers, including one in the aerospace journal Acta Astronautica at age fifteen, with further sole-author work in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and the Minor Planet Bulletin. I am a co-author in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement and The Planetary Science Journal (the latter as part of the international science team for NASA’s DART mission). See all publications.

My work has been recognised with a 2025 NASA Group Achievement Award (DART Period Change Determination Team), the Third Grand Award at Regeneron ISEF 2025, Second Prize at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists 2023, back-to-back Best Project Awards at the Canada-Wide Science Fair (2022 and 2023), and third place in the student oral competition at NASA’s Exploration Science Forum 2026. I am a Masason Foundation Scholar and a 2025 Foresight Fellow in planetary defence. See all awards.

Why These Problems

I am drawn to these problems because the open data on these issues is both big and small at the same time. I have to sift through massive datasets produced by space and ground-based telescopes to find the measurements that matter. And those measurements are often sparse, incomplete, noisy, and may not be repeatable in decades. Whether it is an asteroid observed only a few nights every few years, or an exoplanet system with just a single observed transit, the challenge for me is the same. How far can I push open science, open data, open algorithms, open communities, and ingenuity to extract new knowledge?

Then there is the thrill of discovering the unknown, and the unknown unknowns. For example, how would the mutual orbital period of a binary asteroid change after a kinetic impactor mission? Could it trigger slow structural changes that also change its rotation period? Or can highly elliptical planetary systems exist as stable multi-planet systems?

Beyond Astronomy

Outside of astronomy, I enjoy applying the same open-science approach to solving problems closer to home, where impact is more immediately measurable. Through hackathons and civic-tech projects, I analyze open municipal data to build tools that help identify city issues and make them easier to report and fix. This work allows young people who are unable to vote to feel empowered to make a difference.

Over the past ten years, I have built battlebots, rockets, drones, submarines, and rovers, and taken part in 50+ hackathons because I enjoy learning fast and collaborating with diverse teams. I speak French and English. Away from the telescope, I listen to a lot of pop music and rock climb.

Interested in learning more about my work?

• Astronomy research: www.MonitorMyPlanet.com
• The Moon and Artemis: www.MonitorMyMoon.com
• Robots, AI, and Rovers: www.HotPopRobot.com
• Technology to build better cities: www.bettermycity.com