Acknowledgments

advisor and she needed a graduate student. Before she came to Wesleyan, radio astronomy was that thing that Jodie Foster did in Contact, and while I thought it looked cool, I never thought that I would use it in my masters thesis. Meredith dealt with my insecurities coming back to school after a four-year hiatus and my “aging ” brain that seems to do a reboot every 2-3 months. She gave me a fantastic project to work on and supported me throughout the process of writing the code to model these debris disks. Thank you Meredith for introducing me to radio astronomy, and for your support during my time at Wesleyan (also, thanks for your corrections, suggestions, and the pens that were sacrificed in the name of this thesis). I would also like to thank my other thesis committee members, William Herbst and Roy Kilgard for your comments and suggestions. Roy, thank you for your help with all of my technical trials and tribulations. Mom and dad, thank you for your continued support with my non-traditional decision to become an astronomer. I wouldn’t have gotten this far without you