My graduate background is grounded in optical characterization of astronomical instruments ranging from the far-IR to the optical. My graduate work was in instrumentation for studies of the diffuse cold gas in the interstellar medium. As a NSF AAPF Fellow I took those techniques and applied them to adaptive optics systems, in particular to the area of high contrast imaging of exoplanets in reflected light (NIR). At LASP, I work on several missions in areas as far ranging as insterstellar partical detectors as well as remote sensing instrument for radiation budget analysis.