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!)

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!

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!

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!

These grids are now available to download through a new page on this website! Please visit the new Model Grids page to access the models. At the moment the grids are available to download in their entirety; eventually I’ll update the page with a more detailed interface where users can select the specific parameters that they would like to include in their work with the models

This fall I’ll be attending the “Shocking Universe” meeting in Venice, Italy from September 14th-18th, which should be an excellent chance to hear all the latest news in the fast-moving GRB community! I’ll be giving a seminar at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland on October 9th, and a colloquium at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia on October 23rd. Finally, I’ll be returning to the IfA at the University of Hawaii for the first few weeks of November; I have three observing nights on Keck to attend, and will be meeting with my thesis committee to discuss plans for the final semester of my thesis research in the spring!

At the end of June I’ll be heading to Australia! (sorry…there’s really no way to announce a trip to Australia without involving exclamation points) I’ll be spending a few days up north in Cairns, seeing the Great Barrier Reef and visiting some of the surrounding rain forest, before heading down to Sydney for the main event: presenting a contributed talk at the “Galaxy Metabolism: Galaxy Evolution near and far” meeting.

Then, in mid-July, I’ll be flying to Chile, as I’m currently tentatively slated to observe at Magellan on July 16th and 17th, getting some follow-up observations for my thesis work. I’m very much looking forward to this observing run – Chile is always a beautiful place to visit, and Magellan was a joy to observe on last time. Hopefully last year’s wonderful experience will repeat itself and it’ll be another two days of excellent weather. (now excuse me while I go run and find some wood to knock on…)

The rest of the summer is shaping up to be quiet, or at least relatively so: I’m now officially in the fourth and final year of my PhD program, so this summer also marks the beginning of preparations for the fall job market!

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!

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!