2005 symposium (San Diego)

What: NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellows Symposium, American Astronomical Society Meeting, San Diego, CA (AAS Description)
When: Saturday, 8 January 1:00-6:00 PM and Sunday, 9 January 9:00 AM-5:00 PM
Where: Town and Country Resort and Conference Center

The NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship (AAPF) program is designed to support promising young scientists who combine their research with education and/or outreach activities. During this two-day weekend session, the NSF fellows will discuss their research and education/outreach activities with invited faculty mentors and any AAS members who wish to attend. The goals are to learn from each other's experiences, to listen to suggestions from the audience, and to foster new collaborations. The session will also feature informal discussion panels on topics such as integrating research with teaching and outreach, balancing family life with a scientific career, and making the transition from postdoc to faculty.

Program:

Saturday, January 8, 2005, 1-6PM
1:00 Eileen Friel (NSF): Welcoming remarks
1:15 Meg Urry (Yale): Keynote address
1:50 Aparna Venkatesan (U. Colorado): "First Stars and First Peoples: Results and Lessons from the Four Corners"
2:10 Josh Faber (Illinois): "Black Holes, Fishtanks, and other places light can't escape"
2:30 Sera Markoff (MIT): "Understanding the Ins -- and Especially the Outs -- of Accretion"
2:50 Andrew Sheinis (UCSC/Lick): "The Akamai Optics Short Course at Maui Community College"
3:00 Coffee Break
3:40 Hector Arce (AMNH): "Using Radio and Millimeter Waves for Studying Outflows from Young Stars and for Teaching Astronomy to High School Students"
4:00 Jessica Rosenberg (CfA): "Improving Student Learning: Teaching Methods and the Research Behind Them"
4:10 John Feldmeier (NOAO): "New Studies of Intracluster Starlight"
4:30 Discussion Panel
"Integrating Research with Education and Public Outreach" Alex Filippenko (Berkeley), Eileen Friel (NSF), Todd Henry (GSU), Eric Hooper (UT Austin), Lisa Hunter (CfAO), Dana Lehr (NSF), Don Smith (Michigan)
5:30 Informal discussion
6:30 Symposium dinner (details TBA)
Sunday, January 9, 2005 9AM-5:30PM
9:00 Christopher Conselice (Caltech): "The formation of galaxy stellar and dark mass"
9:20 Eric Gawiser (Yale): "MUSYC: A Census of Protogalaxies at z=3"
9:40 Rose Finn (U. Massachusetts): "Star formation in distant galaxy clusters"
10:00 Coffee Break
10:40 Sheila Kannappan (UT Austin): "Building Galaxy Disks: Infall & Interactions"
11:00 Jessica Rosenberg (CfA): "Infrared Observations of Star-Forming Dwarf Galaxies with Spitzer"
11:10 Katherine Rhode (Wesleyan/Yale): "Globular Cluster Systems as Probes of Galaxy Formation and Evolution"
11:30 Discussion Panel
"Making the Transition from Postdoc to Faculty" Kim Coble (Chicago State), Kim Griest (UCSD), David Helfand (Columbia), Lynne Hillenbrand (Caltech), Charles Liu (CUNY), Andrew Sheinis (UCSC)
12:30 Lunch Break
1:45 Doug Leonard (Caltech): "Are Supernovae Round?"
2:05 Jennifer Hoffman (U.C. Berkeley): "Spectropolarimetry of Asymmetric Supernovae and Support of Astrophysical Sisterhood"
2:25 Ginny McSwain (Yale): "Observations of Rotational Mixing in Massive Stars and the Yale-Peabody Astronomy Collaboration"
2:45 Andrew Sheinis (UCSC/Lick): "Integral Field spectroscopy at Keck: the new IFU for ESI"
2:55 Coffee Break
3:35 Jon Miller (CfA): "Probing Relativistic Phenomena in Stellar-Mass Black Holes"
3:55 Joe Barranco (UCSB/KITP): "Planet Embryos in Vortex Wombs"
4:05 Henry Roe (Caltech): "Mostly Clear with a Chance of Gully Washers: Titan's Methane Weather"
4:15 Discussion Panel
"Balancing Family Life with a Scientific Career" John Feldmeier (NOAO), Kelsey Johnson (Virginia), Dara Norman (CTIO), Kathy Rhode (Wesleyan/Yale), Meg Urry (Yale), Steve Zepf (MSU)
5:15 Dana Lehr (NSF): Concluding Remarks