Michael joined the HSX team in the summer of 2023 as a graduate student. He received his bachelor’s degree in applied engineering physics at Cornell University, where he learned about and studied every branch of physics and math he could find, gravitating towards energy research and plasma physics. He now pursues that interest by working on diagnostic development on HSX, specifically surrounding the existing reflectometry diagnostic. In the near future, he hopes to introduce Doppler Backscattering Reflectometry to the device, giving an additional avenue of fluctuation and flow analysis to HSX.