I’m finally out in Boulder and getting settled as a new postdoc at CU. Things are already off to a good start – a lot of administrative chores are getting checked off quickly, so I’ve been able to still spend some time doing actual science – interesting group meeting paper discussions, a Friday seminar, and working with some of the data acquired on my last Magellan run (the time was mostly lost to wind, but I managed to get a few exciting spectra!) I’ve also gotten a chance to explore Boulder a bit over the Labor Day weekend (including watching the Fourmile fire from Flagstaff mountain last night), and look forward to getting to know my new department and new hometown further in the coming months!

This fall I’ll be traveling back to the CfA for the Einstein Fellow Symposium on October 19-20, and to Annapolis, MD for the Gamma Ray Bursts 2010 conference on November 1-4. Fairly quiet compared to past years, but I’m very much looking forward to both meetings!

Hooray! I successfully defending my thesis yesterday, and am now officially Dr. Levesque!

Between a couple interesting research projects, an observing run coming up at Magellan, and moving from Honolulu to Boston to Boulder, I’ve still got a pretty busy summer coming up even with grad school behind me! That said, I am definitely going to be taking a few quiet days here in Hawaii to relax and celebrate with family and friends!

Hooray!!!

(I also chopped off almost all of my hair yesterday! After growing it out for the full duration of my time in grad school, I was more than ready to cut it literally as soon as I was done! I’m donating it to Pantene Beautiful Lengths, which provides wigs for women that have lost their hair due to cancer treatments. And now I’m back to the super-short hair I had for years!)

My thesis defense is scheduled for 11AM HST on July 8th – it’s almost here! Family and friends are flying out to Hawaii from New England, and if all goes well they should see me become Dr. Levesque by early that afternoon!

I’ll be finishing any final edits to the dissertation manuscript and turning in all the paperwork to campus in the days following my defense, and then moving from Honolulu back to Cambridge on July 21st. While in Cambridge I’ll be continuing my ongoing work with Dr. Edo Berger and Dr. Alicia Soderberg at the CfA. I’ll be flying to Chile and observing low-metallicity red supergiants using IMACS at Magellan on August 14th and 15th, and then moving out to Colorado in late August. Looks like it’s shaping up to be another busy and exciting summer!

After a long and exciting job season, I’ve now made a decision on where I’ll be going next year – I’ve accepted an Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship, to be taken to the University of Colorado at Boulder! I’m very excited to begin working in the department, collaborating with the COS team on developing ISM diagnostics in the ultraviolet regime and applying them to GRB host environments.

Now I just need to finish that whole “doc” part of the postdoc – I’ll be moving back to Honolulu from April through July to finish up my thesis, and my defense is currently scheduled for July 8th. Almost there!

The fall semester has gone very well (and been very busy!) so far. The “Shocking Universe” GRB meeting in Venice was fantastic. I’ve also had very pleasant visits to the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

I’ve also recently firmed up my plans for attending the 215th AAS meeting this coming January in Washington, D.C. With the meeting program newly online, I now know that I’ll be giving a dissertation talk on Wednesday, November 6th at 2PM, at the start of Session #368, “Probing the Universe”. Since I haven’t been to a AAS meeting in a couple of years, I’m really looking forward to the whole big busy week!