Laurel is a graduate student working with Professor Mike McDonald. She is interested in learning about the evolution of our universe through local and high-redshift observations of galaxy clusters. She is currently studying a sample of galaxy clusters observed with the Chandra X-ray Observatory. She is a member of the Physics Graduate Student Council as well as Team TIM. Before coming to MIT, she earned a B.S. in physics at Syracuse University, where she worked on gravitational waves.