Fall 2020

3:40 - 4:30 PM (Pacific) every Thursday, location = Zoom

    • To volunteer for a 12 minute talk + 4 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.

  • 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

September 3, 3:40 - 4:30 PM

  • 1-minute Colloquia

September 10, 12:40 - 13:30 PM

  • Gibor Basri (UCB) - (Almost) Everything We Knew about Starspot Lightcurves is Wrong

  • Samson Johnson (OSU) - Predictions of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Galactic Exoplanet Survey: Free-Floating Planet Detection Rates

September 17, 3:40 - 4:30 PM

  • Nico Garavito (U. Arizona) - Lessons from the ongoing interaction of the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud

  • David Guszejnov (UT Austin) - Protostellar jets and the IMF

  • Guy Nir (UCB) - The Weizmann Fast Astronomical Survey Telescope

September 24, 3:40 - 4:30 PM

  • TBD

  • TBD

  • Hsiao-Wen Chen (Parsons, colloq. speaker) - Mapping the CGM in Emission

October 1, 3:40 - 4:30 PM

  • Diana Powell (UCSC) - Using Dust Grain Aerodynamics to Weigh Protoplanetary Disks

  • Ethan Nadler (Stanford) - Constraints on Dark Matter Microphysics from Dwarf Galaxies

  • Charles Gammie (colloq. speaker) - The Jet-Disk Boundary Layer in Accreting Black Holes

October 8, 3:40 - 4:30 PM

  • Carl Fields (MSU) - Multidimensional Progenitor Models For Core-collapse Supernovae

  • Emmanuel Schaan (LBL) - Halo gas thermodynamics from the cosmic microwave background: implications for large-scale structure and galaxy formation

  • L. Corrales (colloq. speaker, U Michigan) - Five new hot-Jupiter transits investigated withSwift-UVOT

October 15, 3:40 - 4:30 PM

  • Arianna Long (UCI) - Weighing a Dusty, Ultra-Massive Galaxy Cluster Core at z=4

  • Meiji Nguyen (UCB) - First detection of orbital motion for HD 106906 b: A wide-separation exoplanet on a Planet Nine-like orbit

October 22, 3:40 - 4:30 PM

  • Munazza Alam (Harvard) - A Clear Atmosphere for WASP-62b, the Only Known Transiting Giant Planet in the JWST Continuous Viewing Zone

  • Vicky Kalogera (Northwestern, colloq. speaker) - CIERA Programs and Initiatives

October 29, 3:40 - 4:30 PM

  • Bingjie Wang (JHU) - Implications for the Epoch of Reionization in the Local Universe

  • Natasha Abrams (Harvard) - Hunting Black Holes with Photometric Microlensing

  • Jorge Moreno (Pomona, colloq. speaker) - Resolved galaxies in IllustrisTNG and FIREBox

November 5, 3:40 - 4:30 PM

  • Kareem El-Badry (UCB) - Found: the cataclysmic variable progenitors of ultra-compact binaries

  • Almog Yalinewich (CITA) - A new Conservation law for Planetary Collisions

November 12, 3:40 - 4:30 PM

  • Sam Rose (UC Berkeley) - Probing the BH Initial Final Mass Relation with Microlensing

  • Ellie Abrahams (UCB) - A Gaia DR2 Look at the Cataclysmic Variable Donor Sequence

November 19, 3:40 - 4:30 PM

  • Casey Lam (UCB) - Modeling microlensing light curves with Gaussian Processes

  • Yukei Murakami (UCB) - PIPS: A new interpretation of periodogram and light curve fitting

  • Julie Posselt (USC, colloq. speaker) - Research-Practice Partnerships to Advance Equity in Science

December 3, 3:40 - 4:30 PM

  • Yan Liang (Princeton) - Kepler-90: Giant transit-timing variations reveal a super-puff

  • Karen Perez (Columbia) - Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life Near the Galactic Center