Zareb Noel

Biography

Zareb Noel is a Ph.D. candidate who joined the Aero-Optics Research group in Spring 2019, being advised by both Dr. R. Mark Rennie and Dr. Stanislav Gordeyev. Zareb finds his origins in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering. While in Amherst, Zareb engaged in undergraduate experimental and numerical fluid dynamics research in Dr. Jonathan Rothstein’s lab. In the Aero-Optics group, Zareb primarily focuses most of his research efforts on experimentally investigating the fluid dynamics associated with laser-generated plasma, as well as adaptive optics, and novel wavefront sensing techniques. To assist in his investigations, Zareb utilizes data-driven methods such as: regularized optimization, robust statistics, modal analysis, and deep learning. His work with these methods has led to the development of an experimental method to investigate flow fields caused by laser-induced plasmas. Zareb’s work earned him an internship at the Airforce Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 2021. As a Directed Energy Scholar, he assisted in the development of an experimental atmospheric and aero-optic testbed, as well as an investigation into the slope discrepancy problem of the Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensing (SHWFS) technique. Zareb was then invited for another internship in 2022, where he began development of a robust wavefront reconstruction algorithm for SHWFS. In the pursuit of his research goals, Zareb was awarded both the Frazier Thompson Graduate Research and Professional Development Scholarships. He was also awarded a Directed Energy Professional Society (DEPS) Research Grant to help complete his thesis. Beyond his research, Zareb enjoys video games, skateboarding, and music in his free time.