Fall 2018
12:40 - 1:30 PM every Thursday, location = 131 A & B Campbell Hall.
To volunteer for a 12 minute talk + 3 minutes for questions, send email to Paul Kalas (kalas@berkeley.edu).
This forum is mainly for local scientists of any level to present their work to a broad spectrum of the department, and usually includes one short talk by the astronomy colloquium speaker of the day.
Subjects can include personal scientific research, reporting on other work appearing in journals, education and public outreach efforts, science policy, and professional development issues.
It is preferred if speakers bring their own laptop, cable adapter (we have some), and laser pointer. Presentations may also use the whiteboard.
Scientists from other institutions need to have a local scientist hosting their visit to Berkeley before they can request a talk slot.
Bold means confirmed
August 23:
1-minute talks from members of the department (UC Berkeley)
August 30:
Tanmoy Laskar (UC Berkeley) - ALMA's First Transient: A Long-Lasting Reverse Shock! Jet Structure Revealed
Reinhard Genzel (MPE/UCB) - Spatially resolved rotation in the broad line region of 3C 273 on sub-parsec scale
Becky Jensen-Clem (UC Berkeley) colloq. speaker - Planetary Systems Imager: A TMT Second Generation Instrument Concept
September 6:
Nick Choksi (UC Berkeley) - The star clusters that make black hole binaries across cosmic time
Megan Shabram (NASA/Ames) - Hierarchical Bayesian Exoplanet Occurrence Rates
Eve Ostriker (Princeton) colloq. speaker - Feedback-driven galactic outflows
September 13:
Miguel Zumalacarregui (UC Berkeley) - No LIGO MACHO: bounds on primordial black holes as dark matter from gravitational lensing of Ia supernovae
Anna McLeod (UC Berkeley) - Feedback from massive stars, integral field spectroscopy and serendipitous discoveries
George Becker (UC Riverside) colloq. speaker - New Insights Into Reionization from the Heating of the IGM
September 20:
Yong Zheng (UC Berkeley) - Probing the Milky Way's Circumgalactic Medium Using Quasar Absorption Lines
Jacob Jencson (Caltech) - Hunting for Hidden Explosions with SPIRITS
Matt Tiscareno (SETI Institute) colloq. speaker - The DPS Professional Culture and Climate Subcommittee
September 27:
Casey Law (UC Berkeley) - Discovery of the Luminous, Decades-Long, Extragalactic Radio Transient FIRST J141918.9+394036
Ken Shen (UC Berkeley) - Do Dynamically Driven Double Degenerate Double Detonations Direct Dwarf Death? Definitely!
Erik Rosolowsky (Alberta) colloq. speaker - Star Formation Efficiency in the Milky Way: Are all Clouds are Created Equal?
October 4:
Ekta Patel (Arizona) - Revisiting the Dynamical History of the Local Group in the Era of High Precision Astrometry
Dongwon Kim (Berkeley) - HST + Keck stellar proper motions in Gaia Era: the case of the Orion Nebular Cluster
Duncan Brown (Syracuse) colloq. speaker - Land of the LOSC: Gravitational-wave Astronomy from outside the collaboration
October 11:
Hannah Klion (UC Berkeley) - The Role of Shock and Radioactive Heating in Kilonova Light Curves
Andrey Vayner (UCSD) - Quasar hosts unveiled by high angular resolution techniques
Myriam Telus (UCSC) colloq. speaker - Extinct radionuclides in the early solar system
October 18:
Imke de Pater (UC Berkeley) - Radio (+IR/Vis) Observations of Jupiter, in 2014 and Jan. 2017D
Jeremy Hare (UC Berkeley) - Peculiar plasma ejections from the high mass gamma-ray binary PSR B1259-63
Gurtina Besla (Arizona) colloq. speaker - The TIMESTEP undergraduate program
October 25:
Josh Dillon (UC Berkeley) - Redundant Calibration of an Almost-But-Not-Quite Redundant Interferometer
Nicholas McConnell (UCSC) - ISEE's Professional Development Program: preparing future astronomy faculty to be leaders in effective and inclusive education
Bob Kirshner (Harvard; Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation) colloq. speaker - Accelerating Science, with and without supernovae!
November 1:
Kareem El-Badry (UC Berkeley) - White dwarf demographics with Gaia
Isabel Angelo (UC Berkeley) - Orbitize: For All Your (Astrometric Directly-Imaged) Orbit-Fitting Needs
Maria Drout (Carnegie) colloq. speaker - Yellow Supergiants: Why You Should Care
November 8:
Wren Suess (UC Berkeley) - Half-mass radii for ~6,000 galaxies at 1.0 < z < 2.5
Casey Lam (UC Berkeley) - PopSyCLE: Population Synthesis for Compact object Lensing Events
Charlie Conroy (Harvard) colloq. speaker - Massive Star Variability on Day to Decade Timescales
November 15:
Guy Nir (Weizman Institute of Science) - Advantages of Elongated Pupil Telescopes for High Contrast Imaging
Steve Stahler (UC Berkeley) - Disks, Rings and History
Mike Pivovaroff (LLNL) colloq. speaker - Anti-satellite weapons: an emerging challenge
November 29:
Ellianna (Ellie) Schwab (UC Berkeley) - Gaia M Dwarfs in the Kepler Field
Philipp Kempski (UC Berkeley) - Angular momentum transport in nearly collisionless accretion disks
Anthony Brown (Leiden) colloq. speaker - 3D mapping of young stars in the solar neighbourhood with Gaia DR2 (arXiv:1810.09819)
December 6:
Guillaume Shippee (UC Berkeley) - Can the Crab Pulsar Help Us Understand Fast Radio Bursts?
Courtney Dressing (UC Berkeley) - Revolutionizing Astronomy with the Large UV/Optical/IR Surveyor
Tom Madura (San Jose State) - Accessible Astronomy: Using 3D Printing to Teach the Wonders of the Universe to Students with Visual Impairments