Ayanna Bearden

My love for astronomy began in high school. I couldn’t tell you what sparked my interest, but I came to love the universe.

I’m particularly passionate about large scale structures, primarily galaxy interactions. Visually there beautiful to look at and physically there’s so much to explore. I’ve mostly explored interacting AGN galaxies, and I enjoy the complexity of it all. Additionally, I’ve become very fascinated with cosmology.

I recently got to do a project involving the CMB and I realized I truly enjoyed the research. It’s a topic I could pursue as a career focus. Beyond undergrad, I aim to pursue a Ph.D. in astrophysics, aspiring towards a career involving plentiful research and exploration.

Currently, I’m working on a project involving CMB polarization maps. By fitting to the A2s of the Half-Wave Plate as a function of precipitable water vapor, I’ve been able to identify outlier detectors and observations. Additionally, I identified a method to extract these poorly behaving detectors and observations. This will significantly improve our detector selection process, allowing us to generate more accurate CMB polarization maps.