Spring 2015
12:40 - 1:30 PM every Thursday, location = 131 A & B Campbell Hall.
To volunteer for a 12 minute talk + 4 minutes for questions, send email to Paul Kalas (kalas@berkeley.edu) and Al Glassgold (aglassgold@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, and pointer. Presentations may also use the whiteboard.
Bold means confirmed
January 22:
Rodrigo Fernandez (UC Berkeley) - "Disk winds from neutron star merger remnants: electromagnetic transients and r-process nucleosynthesis"
Tiffany Meshkat (Leiden) - "Searching for Planets in Holey Debris Disks"
Scott Ransom (NRAO; visiting Miller Professor; colloq. speaker) - "Surprising Non-Pulsar Science from Globular Cluster Pulsars"
January 29:
Lauren Weiss (UC Berkeley) - “Are the Kepler-11 Planets Ultra-Low Density? Constraining the Kepler-11 Planet Masses with Radial Velocities”
Koutarou Kyutoku (U. Wisconsin-Milwaukee, host Kazumi Kashiyama): "Dynamical mass ejection from black hole-neutron star binaries".
Robert Feldmann (UC Berkeley) - "Dust and metals in galaxies - An equilibrium view on galaxy formation"
February 5:
Melissa Graham (UC Berkeley) - "Constraining the Progenitor Companion of the Nearby Type Ia SN\,2011fe with a Kiloday Nebular Spectrum"
Jason Wang (UC Berkeley) - "Probing the AU Microscopii Debris Disk at Close Separations with the Gemini Planet Imager"
Volunteer Needed
February 12: [cancelled due to conflict with Campbell Hall dedication ceremony]
February 19:
Dick Plambeck (UC Berkeley): "Probing the Parsec-scale Accretion Flow of 3C 84 with Millimeter Wavelength Polarimetry"
Sasha Tchekhovskoy (UC Berkeley) - "What makes astrophysical jets dance and why should we care?"
Alexander Kaurov (U. Chicago) - "Analytical models of reionization in the service of numerical simulations"
February 26:
Sanch Borthakur (UC Berkeley) - "Small-scale Properties of Atomic Gas in Extended Disks of Galaxies"
Isaac Shivvers (UC Berkeley) - "The CSM Around Core-Collapse SNe"
Tim Davis (Hertfordshire; hosted by Freeke) - "Monsters in the dark: Supermassive black hole mass measurements with molecular gas kinematics"
March 5:
Pat Kelly (UC Berkeley) - "A Population of Super-Standardizable Type Ia Supernovae"
Steve Croft (UC Berkeley) - "Surveys with the Murchison Widefield Array"
Ken Shen (UC Berkeley) - "The Fate of Double White Dwarf Binaries"
March 12:
Dick McCray (UC Berkeley) - "SN1987A environmental impact."
Mike McCourt (Harvard) "Going with the flow: using gas clouds to probe the accretion flow feeding Sgr A∗"
Ryan Trainor (UC Berkeley) "The Escape of Gas and Photons from Faint Galaxies"
March 19:
Eliot Quataert (UC Berkeley) "The Origin of Magnetic Fields in the First Galaxies"
Blake Sherwin (UC Berkeley) "New Results from Planck: A Brief Review"
Emily Rauscher (colloq speaker) "What I'm Learning About Diversity & Inclusion"
March 26 - Spring Break
April 2:
Kazumi Kashiyama (UC Berkeley) "Supermassive star formation via high-velocity collisions of protogalaxies"
Daniel Lecoanet (UC Berkeley) "Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability: A Code Comparison"
Dimitrios Psaltis (Arizona; colloq. speaker) “Linking Tests of Gravity On All Scales: from the Strong-Field Regime to Cosmology”
April 9:
Bekki Dawson (UC Berkeley) "A recipe for rocky super-Earths"
Athena Stacy (UC Berkeley): “The Impact of Minihalo Environments On the Growth of Pop III Clusters.”
Nathan Smith (U. Arizona, colloq speaker): "PTF11iqb: Bridging Type IIn with normal supernovae"
April 16:
Mate Adamkovics (UC Berkeley) "The transition between atomic and molecular gas in protoplanetary disks."
Rob De Rosa (UC Berkeley) “Near-IR Characterization of Young Substellar Companions in Upper Scorpius”
Daniel Marrone (U. Arizona; colloq. speaker) “Expanding the Event Horizon Telescope”
April 23:
Freeke van de Voort (UC Berkeley) "A persistent misaligned gas disc in an early-type galaxy"
Josiah Schwab (UC Berkeley) "The Evolution of White Dwarfs towards Accretion-Induced Collapse"
Paul Goldsmith (JPL; colloq. speaker) "Thermal Pressure in the Diffuse Interstellar Medium"
April 30:
Dyas Utomo (UC Berkeley) "EDGE: a CARMA Extragalactic Legacy Survey"
Davide Martizzi (UC Berkeley) “Is the formation of galaxy clusters in cosmological simulations a solved problem?"
Ruth Murray-Clay (UCSB; colloq. speaker) "A unified procedure for calculating thermal atmospheric escape."