Hello! If you have made it to this page then you have found my brand new professional website as well as my first attempt at blogging! This site is primarily going to serve as my professional website for conferences I attend and for researchers or future employers to check out my work! The other purpose of this site and blog is to allow my family and friends to keep up with me and see what I'm up to. First things first, I want to thank my Mom for being awesome and helping me with this website and being the greatest! And of course my family, it was not the easiest choice deciding to move 1,500 miles away to pursue my dream, but my family has been supportive and they still find ways to make me feel like home is not far away.
With that said, I am now about one month in to my PhD program at the University of Montana! Yes, Montana really is as beautiful as you have heard. In my month here I have gotten to do some things outdoors before getting pretty busy with school. When family was here I got to go up to Glacier National Park, I have been to the National Bison Range, and I even got to go tubing (or floating as it is called here) down the Clark Fork River.
For school, I'm only taking two classes this semester but I've been busy with the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program application (or just NSF GRFP for short). This grant is super important to me and my work. It will fund three years of research work as well as cover tuition AND give a stipend for me to live on. Because it is so lucrative, it is obviously very competitive, but I'm giving it my best shot and I think I have a pretty awesome research idea that should give me a good chance.
Well that is a quick update, now time to hit the books and papers! Thank you for taking the time to checkout my website and reading my blog!
-TB