On May 8th I attended the ARCS Honolulu awards banquet. It was another great chance to see the poster presentations of the other ARCS scholars and have more one-on-one discussions about all their research. I got to originally hear about these projects at the ARCS awards presentations on April 17th, and lots of them were fascinating – projects like studies of yellow tang genetics across the Pacific, beneficial bacteria on coral reefs in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, studying chemical and geological evidence left over from the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, and coding up the brain of a density-scanning robot using techniques like genetic programming and neural networks to conduct unmanned autonomous searches for land mines. As a kid who grew up glued to PBS specials, I was in full-on geek-out mode for both occasions. Man, science really is just downright cool.

Amazingly, enormous exploding stars held their own even in the company of cute yellow fish and life-saving robots: at the end of the banquet I was named the ARCS Scholar of the Year for the Honolulu chapter! It was a big surprise, and a big honor, and I’m very thankful to the members of ARCS Honolulu for selecting me as this year’s recipient. During the banquet several of the ARCS members were also honored for their contributions to the organization this year and over the years, and it was wonderful to learn more about these women who have led such interesting lives, traveling all over the world and finding their way to Hawaii in such unique and interesting ways, and who still devote their time and energy and resources to the support of science. It was a truly wonderful night, and I’m so glad I got to be a part of it!

In two weeks I’ll be traveling to the University of Colorado at Boulder with my adviser, Lisa Kewley for a visit from Monday, April 27th, through Wednesday, April 29th. On Monday Lisa will be giving a colloquium on the chemical evolution of galaxies, and on Tuesday I’ll be giving a JILA lunch talk on modeling the environments of long-duration GRB host galaxies. I’m very excited about the visit, and the chance to learn more about the research being done at CU Boulder!

I got some very exciting news tonight – the Awards Committee at the IfA has selected me as this year’s recipient of the Helen Jones Farrar ARCS scholarship in astronomy! Helen Jones Farrar was a forward-thinking woman who was born in Honolulu in the 1890’s. She studied science at Smith College right here in Massachusetts, and later moved back to Hawaii (having lived in both places, and considering the winter we’ve just had here, I can certainly understand the decision!) She witnessed the building of the first telescopes on Mauna Kea and became an enthusiastic supporter of astronomy in her home state. After her death the ARCS scholarship in astronomy was established in her memory.

I’ll be back in Hawaii from April 17th through May 10th to go on two observing runs at Keck. During that time I’ll get to present my research to a campus-wide panel of ARCS board members, see posters detailing the research of the other University of Hawaii ARCS scholars in a variety of different disciplines (including oceanography, zoology, and geology/geophysics – it should be really interesting!), and attend an ARCS award banquet. I can’t wait!

On March 19th I’ll be the speaker at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics monthly “Observatory Night” for the public! I’m extremely excited about this – I love giving public talks and trying to pass on enthusiasm for astronomy and science to an interested audience. I’ll be talking about GRBs and how GRB astronomy is conducted, with special attention paid to GRB 080319B, the outstandingly bright gamma-ray burst that occurred on March 19th, 2008 (exactly one year before the talk!*) and was visible to the naked eye despite its origin from a dying star 7.5 billion light years away. The title of the talk, “The Second Biggest Bang?”, was fine when I first gave a version of it last April in Hawaii, at the Institute for Astronomy’s Open House, but it was rendered obsolete about four days ago thanks to a press release on the tremendous GRB 080916C. Oh well: I figure it’s a good opportunity to demonstrate to people the timescales that science can sometimes work on, and how quickly we’re discovering new things in the current age of astronomy!

The lecture will be in Phillips Auditorium at the rear of the CfA complex, which is located at 60 Garden Street in Cambridge. It’ll also be webcast if anyone is interested! And hopefully the skies will be clear that night so everyone can do some rooftop observing afterward!

*When we were scheduling the talk I was given one date in February, one in March, and one in April. The date in March was just too perfect to pass up!

I didn’t want to post about this until I knew for sure that it would work out, but I’ve recently confirmed that I’ll be attending the “Intermediate Mass Stars <–> Massive Stars” meting in Strasbourg France on the 9th-11th of February! It looks to be a very interesting meeting on the different approaches used in modeling these types of stars, and I’ll be giving a talk on modeling red supergiants. I’ll also be looking forward to discussions of massive star modeling as a whole, and how it fits in with the work I’ve been doing more recently on stellar population synthesis models. It should be a very enjoyable meeting! (also thanks very much to the organizing committee for their generosity in giving me a talk slot and some funding towards my flight and lodging!)