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