I just wanted to post a brief update reminding everyone that the application deadline for our Aspen summer workshop, “The Evolution of Massive Stars and Progenitors of Gamma-Ray Bursts”, is rapidly approaching: January 31st, 2012!

Applications are available here. More information on how to apply, admissions policies, housing, and other services and facilities available at the Aspen Center for Physics can be found at the ACP website under “Participant Information”. Successful applicants will receive invitations to participate in mid-March, with a deadline for response of April 1st.

We’ve already received a great amount of interest in this workshop, and it’s shaping up to be a fantastic and highly productive two weeks! Please visit the meeting website for a more detailed summary of the meeting, and feel free to contact me if you have any additional questions.

The fall semester has been excellent, and now that it’s winding down I’m looking forward to a busy spring!

First of all, my visit to Geneva Observatory in September was excellent – it was wonderful to work in person with my collaborators in the stellar evolution group (especially my host, Georges Meynet) and we’ve kicked off a brand-new project and series of papers looking at the effects of stellar rotation treatments on the stellar evolutionary models. I also finally broke my long-standing weather curse at Magellan, with two beautiful half-nights of MIKE observations looking at unusual red supergiants in the Magellanic Clouds. It was an extremely productive and interesting run (any time a spectrum gets an observer to say “Well, I don’t know what it is, but I like it!”, you know you’ve found something cool). These projects and others will definitely be keeping me busy during the spring semester!

I’ll also be doing some more traveling! I’ll be starting the year at the Austin AAS meeting (January 8-12), chairing and presenting in the Gamma-Ray Bursts oral session on Wednesday and volunteering as a judge for the Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Awards. I’ll also be an invited speaker at both the IAU 279: Death of Massive Stars: Supernovae and Gamma-Ray Bursts symposium in Nikko, Japan (March 12-16) and the Fermi/Swift GRB Symposium 2012 in Munich (May 7-11).

Back home in Colorado I’ll continue working as coordinator of Beyond Boulder career mentorship program for Physics and APS undergraduates – check out the website for news about our Spring 2012 schedule! I’m also looking forward to another public presentation at Fiske Planetarium this February as part of their “Colorado Skies” series. Finally, I’ll also be working with the rest of the SOC on preparations for this summer’s Aspen workshop on The Evolution of Massive Stars and Gamma-Ray Bursts (June 17-July 1) – it’s shaping up to be an excellent workshop that has already generated a huge amount of interest. If you’re interested in attending, don’t forget to apply by the January 31st deadline!

I am pleased and excited to announce a new workshop to be held next summer, “The Evolution of Massive Stars and Progenitors of Gamma-Ray Bursts”.

Held from June 17 – June 29 2012 at the Aspen Center for Physics, this workshop is aimed at bringing together experts in the complementary fields of massive stellar evolution and long-duration gamma-ray bursts. While these two areas share many common goals and research topics, communication between the two has been limited. This workshop will offer an opportunity for the two communities to exchange expertise and consider some of the most pressing current questions in these areas.

Myself and the other members of the scientific organizing committee (Andy Fruchter, Norbert Langer, Philip Massey, Georges Meynet, Maryam Modjaz, and Alicia Soderberg) will be working with the Aspen Center for Physics to help bring this workshop together during the coming year. I will post additional information, including a link to the workshop website, as soon as it becomes available. Please contact me if you’re interested in attending!

Please visit the meeting website for a more detailed summary of the meeting and information on how to apply.

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!

The first semester at CU Boulder has been an enjoyable chaos of settling in, traveling, and preparing to launch a couple of new projects. I’m enjoying my new department and new hometown, and am looking forward to the spring semester!

Research:
I’m continuing my research in a variety of areas: nearby LGRB host galaxies, new stellar population synthesis and photoionization models, nearby core-collapse SN host galaxies, and the physical properties of red supergiants. Some of this work is a continuation or extension of the research I did during my PhD these, a couple of these projects are new, and all of them involve interesting observing runs, new and interesting data, and/or hours of cursing at new bugs in my models. Sometimes all three. Either way, it’s shaping up to be a great semester for doing some very interesting research!

Travels:
-I’ll be heading down to Apache Point Observatory in early February to observe with the ARCES echelle spectrograph on the 3.5m telescope. I’ve visited APO before but never observed there, and am excited to use a new telescope and instrument!

-I’ll be flying to Chile at the end of March for two nights of classical observations with GMOS at Gemini-S! I always love observing in Chile, and am once again looking forward to using a new telescope!

-In mid-April I’ll be giving an invited talk at the IAU 279 “Death of Massive Stars” symposium in Nikko, Japan. The conference is shaping up to be fascinating, and I cannot WAIT to see Japan for the first time!

-In May I’ll be traveling to Seattle, WA to give a spring semester colloquium talk at the University of Washington.

-Finally, in late June I’ll be giving an invited talk at the “Supernovae and their Host Galaxies” meeting in Sydney, Australia.

Teaching:
I’ve volunteered to teach a weekly recitation hour of the APS graduate course ASTR 5120, “Radiative and Dynamical Processes“, taught by Dr. Rosalba Perna. It’ll be a good and low-key introduction to teaching again after a hiatus during grad school; plus, I’ll confess that preparing for the recitation sections has been an excellent and much-needed refresher on some of the course components!

All in all, 2011 looks to be getting off to a great and busy start!