About This Blog

Definitely not expecting anyone will look at this blog let alone be interested enough to visit this page, but just in case: Hi! I'm Ava Polzin, a PhD student in astrophysics at Yale University. You can see my CV/learn how to get in touch with me on my professional website.

This blog, The Quals Gambit, came about as a means of holding myself accountable in preparing for the oral portion of my doctoral program's qualifying exam. Starting January 1, 2021, I'll be reading papers that are immediately relevant to my thesis and uploading astrobites-style summaries here. 

I'm not going through the literature in any particular order, and I'll be glad to hear suggestions for relevant papers, but if a seminal paper pertaining to the low surface brightness regime or dwarf galaxies appears to be missing, please reach out.