Zach Vanderbosch is a sixth-year graduate student working with Drs. Don Winget and Mike Montgomery studying the atmospheric properties of pulsating helium atmosphere white dwarfs and the variable star detection capabilities of new all-sky surveys such as the Zwicky Transient Facility. Zach frequently travels to the McDonald Observatory in West Texas to collect data on his objects and to Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque, NM to learn how to design and conduct white dwarf photosphere experiments. Zach earned his B.S. in Physics and Astronomy from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in 2013, and spent two years coaching rock climbing teams and developing custom diffraction gratings before attending UT Austin for graduate school. Outside of his academic pursuits, Zach continues to be an avid rock climber and traveler.

In Fall of 2021, Zach will be joining Caltech as a Postdoctoral Fellow to work with the Zwicky Transient Facility team. There, he will primarily focus on discovery and characterization efforts for white dwarfs hosting transiting planetary debris, among other interesting sources of transient and periodic variability.