E.M. Levesque

SAO Predoctoral Fellow!

admin — Thu, 29 May 2008 23:15:56 +0000

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!

Summer research/travel plans

admin — Tue, 20 May 2008 03:07:07 +0000

I’m going to be traveling quite a bit this summer, so I thought I’d briefly detail where I’ll be off to and what I’ll be doing.

From June 15th - 20th I’ll be attending the 255th IAU Symposium on low-metallicity galaxies in Rapallo, Italy. I’ll be presenting a contributed talk on Thursday on “Modeling the ISM Properties of Metal-Poor Galaxies and Gamma-Ray Bursts”. It’s looking like a really fascinating meeting, so it should be a great week!

Following the meeting, on June 23rd - 25th I’ll be visiting Geneva Observatory, working on some really interesting collaborations with Drs. Andre Maeder and Georges Meynet and presenting a seminar on June 25th (again on our modeling of metal-poor galaxies and gamma-ray bursts!)

Finally, I’ll be at Oxford University from July 6th - 26th (traveling there via Garmisch, Munich, Salzburg, Berlin, and Amsterdam on an extremely overclocked 10 days of vacation). While there I’ll be working with Dr. Katherine Blundell on developing a lab exercise in spectroscopy to be used as part of the HI-STAR (Hawaii Student/Teacher Astronomy Research) program at the UH Manoa campus, a summer astronomy research experience for high school students. The program encourages students to continue their research projects as participants in the Hawaii State Science and Engineering Fair (HSSEF). As someone who participated in science fair projects straight through middle school and high school, I’m pretty excited to get involved in this kind of program!

It’s going to be a pretty wild summer! And I’ll have more news up soon regarding my plans for the upcoming academic year!

University Research Council Student Award

admin — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 01:02:07 +0000

I got more exciting news this weekend, during the Institute for Astronomy’s excellent Open House event on April 27th. I learned that I received the University Research Council Student Award for excellence in masters’-level research! It was a really nice surprise at the event, and I’m very grateful to the University of Hawaii’s Research Council for the recognition! Wow, it’s been a month of good news!

Ford Foundation Fellowship!

admin — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:54:13 +0000

Today I found that I’ve been awarded the three-year Ford Foundation Predoctoral Diversity Fellowship! This is a really great honor and opportunity - I’m very excited!! The Ford Foundation is a really fantastic organization - you can read more about them and their excellent work here, and about the details of the fellowship program here.

NSF GRFP Honorable Mention

admin — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:44:50 +0000

Well, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program has updated their website with a list of award and honorable mention winners, so I just found out that I received an honorable mention this year! Congrats to the other honorable mention winners, and a BIG congratulations to all the fellowship recipients this year!

Officially a Ph.D. student!

admin — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 03:14:45 +0000

Today I successfully passed my comprehensive exam, in which I presented my Ph.D. thesis topic to the entire IfA and then answered questions from them and from my thesis committee. I got some excellent questions and had a really positive discussion with my committee. I am officially ABD, and my thesis topic, “Exploring the Environments of Long-Duration Gamma-Ray Bursts”, is now approved! Hooray!

Friends of the IfA presentation on Jan. 28

admin — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 23:55:28 +0000

I’ll be giving a talk on my research with Lisa Kewley to the Friends of the IfA on January 28th at the IfA Manoa auditorium. At the IfA we complete two masters-level research projects as part of qualifying as Ph.D. candidates, and Friends of the IfA periodically gives awards for these projects. I’ll be presenting with two other recent award winners, and covering the intriguing world of gamma-ray bursts and galaxy environments for a general audience! A website giving details of the event can be found here.

Done with my Masters

admin — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 17:08:12 +0000

Now that this semester’s over, I’ve completed the University of Hawaii and Institute for Astronomy requirements for my M.S. Woohoo! Work on my Ph.D. thesis proposal has been going great, so I’m planning on proposing for it this February - at the IfA we call this the comprehensive exam. I’ve still got some work to do on it, but I’m really excited and am looking forward to proposing and then getting to work on it. Happy holidays!

I’m going to be in a book!

admin — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:42:00 +0000

Mabel Armstrong has written a book called “Women Astronomers: Reaching for the Stars” that will be published by Beagle Bay press in January of 2008. She very nicely contacted me early in 2007 about being included in the “Rising Stars” section of the book! There’s now a nice website on the book now that includes my blurb, and it looks like I’m in some pretty excellent company! You can preorder the book from Amazon.com.

I passed my quals!

admin — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 02:19:12 +0000

I passed the IfA’s qualifying exam today, along with the five other students that took the exam. Congrats to everyone, and here’s to passing a major milestone in the Ph.D. program! For the rest of the term I’ll be finishing up my Masters requirements and working on my thesis proposal.