About Me

Picture of Will at Death Valley
Picture of Will after his graduation
Will celebrating his PhD graduation with the Bruin Bear

Originally from San Francisco, California, I moved to the Midwest for my undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago, where I majored in Physics with a specialization in Astrophysics. I came back to the West Coast for my graduate studies at UCLA, in the department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences. Now I'm back East at the Carnegie Earth and Planets Lab in Washington, DC. Outside of planets, my interests include watching baseball (Go Giants!), cooking, hiking, and exploring cities via public transportation. I am also an avid runner, and I ran the Chicago Marathon in 2016.

My last name is pronounced "MY-zner" (IPA: 'maɪznər). The first syllable rhymes with "pie". My pronouns are he/him/his.

Will demonstrating the transit method at EYU

Outreach

In addition to studying how planets and their atmospheres form and evolve, I am passionate about sharing my knowledge beyond the scientific community. As an undergraduate, I was President of the Ryerson Astronomical Society, the University of Chicago's undergrad-run astronomy club. In grad school, I TA'ed UCLA'sEPS SCI 9, Solar System and Planets, in 2019, 2020, and 2021, winning an EPSS Teaching Award in 2020. Below you can find a list of public outreach events I've been a part of.

Outreach Activities

  • Volunteer, UCLA EPSS Eclipse Viewing Event, October 2023
  • Talk, "Research in Space Fields", ConnectEd Research Student Organization, February 2022
  • Planetarium Host, UCLA Planetarium, 2019-2023
  • Volunteer, Exploring Your Universe, 2018-2020
  • Demonstrator, UCLA AstroLive, 2020
  • WISRD Fall Lecture, Wildwood School, “Fantastic Trans-Neptunian Objects and What They Tell Us about Our Origin”, November 4th, 2019
  • Letter Writer, Letters to a Pre-Scientist, 2019-2020, 2022-Present
  • Meeting Talks, Ryerson Astronomical Society, 2015-2018
    • Various topics including “Planetary Atmospheres”, “Pluto”, “Life in the Solar System”, “The James Webb Space Telescope”, and “Planet Formation”, among others
    • As President (2017-18), organized club activities, including trips for Dark Sky observing and to Yerkes Observatory, as well as public observing nights on campus.
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    Service Activities and Undergraduate Research Supervision

    I have served as a peer reviewer for the Astrophysical Journal and Astrophysical Journal Letters. Between 2020 and 2022, I represented the graduate student body on the EPSS Curriculum Committee. In that time, we overhauled significant portions of the graduate student curriculum, and I provided input on the student perspective to the faculty on these changes. In 2021-2022, I was the research supervisor for UCLA undergraduate Manasa Lakshmi Narasimhan, working on super-Earth atmospheric evolution.