Fall semester work and travel plans
Wow, where did the first year of my postdoc go?? It’s been a busy head-down kind of year trying to get a number of new projects started, and I can’t believe it’s already almost time for the fall semester!
I’ll be starting the fall off with some traveling. From August 31 – September 3 I’ll be in Evanston, IL at “The Future of Astronomy” conference, organized by CIERA. It should be a good chance to hear about a wide variety of different research projects being conducted by other postdocs!
From September 6 – 30 I’ll be traveling again, visiting Geneva Observatory to work with Georges Meynet and other members of the stellar evolution team on developing and refining stellar evolutionary tracks with rotation. I’ve used the Geneva evolutionary models heavily in almost every aspect of my research all of my research, so it will be EXCELLENT to finally get some hands-on experience with the models and participate in their development. (it’ll also be an interesting chance to dust off my embarrassingly bad French. You’d think that with a last name like “Levesque” I’d have a better handle on it…)
I’ll also be taking a short trip from Geneva down to Las Campanas Observatory from September 12-15 for two nights on the Clay telescope at Magellan. I’m hoping to break my recent bad-weather curse at LCO and gather some exciting data before returning to Geneva!
Following a short vacation while I’m across the pond (visiting Madrid, Barcelona, and Edinburgh for the Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival) I’ll be visiting Oxford University briefly from October 10-12 before returning to Colorado. Finally, I’ll be attending the annual Einstein Fellows Symposium from October 25 – 26 in Greenbelt, MD. I’m looking forward to hearing about all of the Fellows’ latest research, particularly the new 2011 Fellows.
Back home here in Colorado, I’ve recently taken over as organizer of the Beyond Boulder program, a seminar/workshop series and online resource for undergraduates in physics and astronomy at CU Boulder originally started by NSF Fellow Makenzie Lystrup. The program for the fall is currently being finalized, and should include panels, discussions, and Q&A sessions on topics such as undergraduate research and teaching opportunities, career opportunities, the graduate admissions process, and advice on preparing grad school applications. I’m looking forward to working more closely with the CU Boulder undergrads and to being a part of such a valuable program!
In short, summer is winding down surprisingly quickly, but it’s shaping up to be another busy and interesting semester, and a good start to the second year of my postdoc!
