The reionization history of the Universe, including the question of whether stars or quasars are sources of ionizing ultraviolet radiation, is an active area of current research in cosmology. Scott collected data for this analysis from the MMT, Magellan, and Bok telescopes, and supplemented these observations with archival data from the Hubble Space Telescope. Her thesis represents an unusually comprehensive work involving new observations, data reduction and analysis, the use of different telescopes and spectral ranges, control of errors and systematics, and theoretical modeling and interpretation. The three papers that Scott published as a result of this work have made a strong impact: they stand as definitive results that established her as an expert in the evolution of the ultraviolet background and ionization of the intergalactic medium at low redshift.

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