About Me

Red brick apartment buildings with fire escapes in The Bronx

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Physics and Astronomy department of the University of Pittsburgh studying dark matter halos and strong gravitational lensing with expertise in machine learning, SQL, and large-scale statistical modeling.
I am dedicated to lifelong learning and exploring new technologies and am experienced in leading community initiatives, leading research projects, and teaching classes.
I enjoy creating inclusive, collaborative environments that support both learning and discovery, while mentoring others and advancing meaningful research.
Some other background on me is that I was born in Albania but raised in The Bronx in New York City and my non-academic interests include art and design, cooking and baking, rock and punk music, reading, and rock climbing.

Education:
BS: Stony Brook University (2017) - Physics and Astronomy
MS: Univeristy of Pittsburgh (2023) - Physics

Projects


Data Science and Analytics:


Fashion Forecast I developed a data driven approach to forecast fashion trends by extracting dominant color palettes from runway images using clustering algorthms.


Research Interests: Dark matter halos and strong gravitational lensing.

Publications:
First-Author:
Subhalos are Distributed Anisotropically About Their Hosts
The influence of subhaloes on host halo properties
Co-Author:
Evidence of galaxy assembly bias in SDSS DR7 galaxy samples from count statistics

Community

Teaching: I have served as a teaching assisstant for introductory astronomy courses, as well as algebra based and calculus based physics courses.

Outreach: I participated in the 2022 ACCelerate Creativity + Innovation Festival where I spoke to the public about the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) in an exhibit called Making the Largest Maps of the Universe.

Equity & Inclusion:. I am deeply committed to promoting equity and inclusion in STEM. I am actively involved in multiple DEI initiatives in the Physics and Astronomy department at the University of Pittsburgh. Over several years, I served as president, vice president and social media chair for the Women and Minorities in Physics group and as a member of our department Equity and Inclusion committee.

Contact

Email: lormezini@gmail.com