Introducing Thomas Connor

I am Thomas Connor (@Thomas_Connor), a postdoctoral fellow at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science. This fall, I will be moving down the road in Pasadena to JPL / Caltech as a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow. Previously, I earned my PhD from Michigan State University. As an observational astronomer, I primarily work in the X-ray and optical regimes. I have varied scientific interests — I have worked on numerous nearby galaxies and the most distant quasar yet found. Much of my scientific work has focused on understanding the evolution of clusters of galaxies, utilizing the fantastic Hubble imaging of the CLASH program or my own observations taken on the Magellan telescopes. I am also involved in several active lines of research investigating the properties of quasars in the first billion years of the Universe.

During my week at the helm of Astrotweeps, I will be on-site at Las Campanas Observatory, one of the premier locations for ground-based observations, talking both about life as an observational astronomer and sharing the experience as a total solar eclipse passes over the observatory. The eclipse, which will be visible just before sunset from Buenos Aires, Argentina to La Serena, Chile, and out into the Pacific Ocean, will occur on July 2. Tens of thousands of visitors are expected to arrive just to the little stretch of desert that La Silla and Las Campanas Observatories call home, not to mention everywhere else in the path of the totality.

When not working, I like to spend time outside: hiking, climbing, and camping, and I have recently gotten back into running after a decade of sloth.

Twitter: @Thomas_Connor

Web page: http://thomasconnor.org/

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Introducing Marcel Pawlowski

I am Marcel Pawlowski (@8minutesold), a Schwarzschild Fellow at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam. I moved back to Germany about half a year ago from the University of California Irvine, where I was a Hubble Fellow. Before that, I was a postdoc at Case Western Reserve University and got my PhD from the University of Bonn in 2013. Most of my research revolves around dwarf and satellite galaxies, especially those in the Local Group. I study the phase-space distributions of systems of satellite galaxies and use them to test cosmological models. This has established the planes of satellite galaxies problem, a mismatch between the flattened, kinematically coherent observed satellite systems, and the typically more random satellite distributions found in cosmological simulations. In addition, I have a keen interest in other small scale problems of cosmology, alternatives to the Lambda Cold Dark Matter model, and philosophy of science.

Besides my research and spending time with my family, I very much enjoy visiting museums and exhibitions of contemporary art and photography, especially documentary and humanist photography. I am also active as a street photographer myself, documenting my impressions of the daily life in the different places my job has brought me to.

Twitter: @8minutesold
Website: http://marcelpawlowski.com

Re-introducing Sarah McIntyre

I’m Sarah McIntyre (@ExoBioExplorer) a PhD student at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University.

My current research aims to examine the effect that a diverse range of astronomical and planetary parameters have on an exoplanet’s ability to sustain liquid water. I spend most of my time working on exoplanet models and simulations and doing lab experiments. Long term research plans include helping determine optimal targets for near-future ground- and space-based observations of planetary atmospheres and the potential detection of life in space.

When not exploring exoplanets I read (lately mainly about AI/machine learning), compose, play piano (or violin) and travel.

Re-introducing Meg Schwamb

Meg Schwamb is currently an assistant scientist at Gemini Observatory. She also serves as the NIRI (Near-InfraRed Imager) instrument scientist at Gemini North in Hilo, Hawai’i.  She is a planetary scientist and astronomer focusing on understanding how planets and their building blocks form and evolve. Starting later this year, Meg will be island hopping. She’ll be leaving the Big Island of Hawai’i and heading to Northern Ireland.  Later this year, Meg will be joining Queen’s University Belfast as a lecturer in the Astrophysics Research Centre.

Meg uses large surveys to probe the small body reservoirs in the Solar System. Her work focuses on studying the orbital and surface properties of Kuiper belt objects, like Pluto in the Outer Solar System.  Meg is currently serving as co-chair of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Solar System Science Collaboration. Meg also mines large datasets via citizen science, enlisting hundreds of thousands of people worldwide in the research effort. She is currently involved in the  Planet Four , Planet Four: Terrains, Planet Four: Ridges citizen science projects to respectively map seasonal fans on the south pole of Mars, characterize surface features on the Martian South Pole and map polygonal ridges in the Martian mid latitudes

You can find Meg on twitter at @megschwamb

Introducing Jana Grcevich

I’m the outreach coordinator for Columbia University’s Astronomy Department, and an adjunct instructor at the Cooper Union School of Art and at the American Museum of Natural History. I received my PhD from Columbia University for work on dwarf galaxies and interstellar gas. I was the Kathryn W. Davis Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History, where I taught future high-school science teachers with the Master of Arts in Teaching program, and where I host shows for the Astronomy Live series at the Hayden planetarium. I was an Insight Data Science fellow, and worked as a data scientist and consultant with Schireson Associates for a year and a half doing television ad targeting using machine learning. I was also a Simon’s Foundation Science Sandbox Fellow working on the interpretation of astronomical data for the public.

I have been a long time “space travel agent” and collaborator with Guerilla Science‘s Intergalactic Travel Bureau events, most recently at the Exploratorium. I co-wrote a space-oriented travel guide, the Vacation Guide to the Solar System, published by Penguin Random House in 2017, and worked on the free virtual reality Space Vacation app. I also enjoy printmaking, paper marbling, and textile arts.

Introducing Richard Easther

Prof Richard Easther is an astrophysicist at the University of Auckland, in New Zealand. Easther’s work spans topics in astrophysics and particle cosmology. These range from the behaviour of dark matter on galactic scales, through to the cosmology of the “multiverse”, observational signatures of the hypothetical “inflationary” era, and the possible cosmological implications of string theory.

Easther is a New Zealander, and completed his undergraduate degree and PhD at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, graduating with his doctorate in 1994. He held post-doctoral positions at Waseda in Tokyo, Brown in Providence. Rhode Island, and Columbia in New York City. Easther became a faculty member in Physics and Astronomy at Yale University from 2004. He returned to New Zealand at the end of 2011, moving home to take up a professorship at the University of Auckland, where he is currently Head of Department [Chair] of Physics.

An enthusiastic teacher, Easther has led a major overhaul of the undergraduate physics curriculum at the University of Auckland, and he is a co-founder of the university’s Science Scholars programme. Easther has been involved with a number of initiatives to improve equity outcomes, and he is a frequent commentator on science and technology issues in New Zealand. His blog is at excursionset.com, he is on twitter at @reasther and his group’s homepage is at cosmology.auckland.ac.nz

Reintroducing Michael West

Michael West is Deputy Director for Science at Lowell Observatory. He has been a professional astronomer for more than three decades and feels blessed to be able to explore the universe for a living. He received his PhD in astronomy from Yale University and held research, teaching and leadership positions at universities and observatories on four continents before joining Lowell in 2015.

Michael’s research is extragalactic in focus. Over the years he has studied giant cannibal galaxies, orphaned star clusters, the cosmic web, and other curios of the cosmos.  He began his career as a theoretical astrophysicist – his PhD thesis was a computational study of how the properties of galaxy clusters might depend on the type of dark matter that dominates the universe – but he gradually moved into observational astronomy.

Michael is passionate about sharing the wonders of the universe with people of all ages, and currently serves on the IAU’s Commission C2 on Communicating Astronomy with the Public. He loves writing and is particularly fascinated by the interplay between science and culture. His essays have been published by The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today, Scientific American, Astronomy magazine and more. He has also written two books, most recently A Sky Wonderful with Stars: 50 Years of Modern Astronomy on Maunakea, and he’s hard at work on his next book.

Introducing Aswin Sekhar

Dr Aswin Sekhar is a solar system dynamicist at Armagh Observatory & Planetarium, Northern Ireland. His work mainly focuses on the dynamical evolution of small solar system bodies like meteoroids, comets and asteroids.

He is the first professional meteor astronomer from India. In addition to research, he contributes popular science articles to various national and international media. He does multiple science public outreach projects in India for rural schools and university students.

Apart from sciency stuff, he enjoys swimming, badminton, cricket, chess, experimenting various Indian recipes, playing Tabla (Indian drums), treks on mountains, sipping beer near beaches and gambling card games for non-astronomical sums of money! Having said all this, he is not an expert in any of these things mentioned above!

 

Re-introducing Kat Volk

I’m Kat Volk (@kat_volk), a staff scientist at the University of Arizona’s Department of Planetary Sciences/Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson, Arizona. My research mostly involves a mix of theoretical and observational studies of trans-Neptunian objects (aka Kuiper belt objects) in the outer solar system, with a focus on how their orbits can help us understand the dynamical history of the giant planets in our solar system. I also study the dynamics of exoplanet systems like those discovered by the Kepler mission.

I got my PhD in planetary science from the University of Arizona in 2013. I then spent two years working at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, mostly as part of the Outer Solar System Origins Survey (OSSOS) which discovered more than 800 objects in the outer solar system. I moved back to Tucson in 2015 to continue a variety of research projects. You can find research updates on my website: katvolk.com.

Introducing Jielai Zhang

During her PhD at the University of Toronto, Jielai (@zhangjielai) helped build the Dragonfly Telephoto Array, the world’s best telescope for low surface brightness observations of the Universe. She led the development of the image processing software for Dragonfly. The team, led by Prof. Roberto
Abraham and Prof. Pieter van Dokkum, discovered a new class of galaxies called ultra-diffuse galaxies, a subset of which has been shown to be strangely devoid of dark matter.  Jielai also led studies of galaxy disks and dust in the Milky Way, co-supervised by Prof. Peter Martin.

For her first postdoc, Jielai is pivoting to medical imaging on a Schmidt Science Fellowship. She is in Prof. Alison Noble’s group working on applications of deep learning for fetal health monitoring. Her goal is to produce atlases of the developing fetal brain using 3D ultrasound data for fetuses affected by congenital heart disease or were born small for their gestational age. She will also use routine fetal ultrasound videos and related multi-modal data to explore the systematic improvement of clinical image recording.

Equipped with new image analysis and deep learning techniques, Jielai will move to Australia in late 2019 to uncover the mysteries of how the Universe changes second to second.