My first priority is to help keep our Department a great place to be! My research centers on understanding the energetics and physical conditions within galaxies and their nuclei with atomic and molecular spectroscopy. As part of this effort, I've developed instrumentation for radio observations to find redshifts of individual high-redshift galaxies, to probe the formation of metals over cosmic time, and to explore warm and dense regions near young stars with submillimeter spectral lines. I've also enjoyed using the Herschel Space Telescope and the SOFIA airborne observatory to probe our Galactic center, both to understand the physical conditions in this complex region and to extrapolate to observations of more distant galaxies.