Academic Life

My master's research at the University of Virginia involved hydrodynamic simulations of interacting binary stars. My thesis advisor for this work was Mercedes Richards, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for her patience, teaching and support .

This work produced three publications:

• Richards & Ratliff, 1998, H-alpha Emission in Algol-Type Binaries, ApJ, 493, 326
• Ratliff, M. A. 1996, M.A. thesis, University of Virginia
  
• Ratliff, M. A., & Richards, M. T. 1995, BAAS, 27, 1343
  

While the Head TA in the astronomy department at UVa, I also spent a lot of time developing labs and teaching equipment for the undergraduate astronomy. I took a few nice images with a Meade CCD in preparing a new AST 313 laboratory.