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!)

It’s been a while since I’ve updated things around here, so I’ve finally taken care of it. The website now has an updated CV and publication list, new contact information reflecting my location as an SAO predoc, and my home page now reports that I’m a third-year rather than a second-year. Good thing that’s been cleared up!

My thesis research has been going really well so far – clear nights, working model programs, and papers in prep! I had a very enjoyable fall semester, particularly at the massive star meetings in Flagstaff and Pasadena where I learned a lot and enjoyed meeting lots of people in the field! Finally, I had my first thesis committee meeting in November, and we discussed my general timeline for my thesis work. At the risk of jinxing it by writing it here, if all continues to go according to plan it looks like I’ll be able to stick to my original timeline of finishing – the word every grad student loves to hear – in another year and a half!

I’ll likely be spending most of the upcoming semester working hard on my thesis, but will be looking ahead to some meetings this summer soon enough!

I’m currently settled in as an SAO predoc in Cambridge, MA, looking forward to a year of interesting research, new collaborations, and seasons! (sounds strange coming from a Hawaii resident, but I’m dying for some cold weather! Of course, we’ll see if I’m still saying that when February rolls around…)

This fall I’ve been asked to speak at two different meetings about my research with Phil Massey and other collaborators on red supergiants. I’ll be giving an invited talk at the “Hot Massive Stars: A Lifetime of Influence” workshop for Peter Conti in Flagstaff this October, and a review talk at the November “Hot and Cool: Bridging Gaps in Massive Star Evolution” meeting in Pasadena in November. I’ll also be back in Hawaii at the IfA at the beginning of November to observe during my three upcoming Keck nights (wish me clear skies!) and meet with my thesis committee.

For the time being, though, I’m hunkered down at Harvard, hoping to make some big strides in my thesis in the next few months!

This is some big news that I’ve been looking forward to posting for a while. I recently found out that I’ve been accepted into the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s predoctoral program at Harvard University! It’s now official – I’ll be spending the upcoming academic year in Cambridge, MA as a predoctoral student at Harvard, working on my thesis with Dr. Robert Kirshner. I’ll still be a full-time student at the Institute for Astronomy, and am currently planning on only one year of predoctoral work at Harvard so that I can finish up my Ph.D. thesis back in Hawaii.

For now, however, I’m getting ready to head back out to the Great Frozen North for a year (brrr), along with getting everything squared away for Europe. It’s shaping up to be a pretty busy summer, but I’m looking forward to the travel, and to being back on the mainland for a year of interesting research!