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!)

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!