Last week I got to work and after only 2 days was off to a conference. This time it was the Advances in Theoretical and Observational Cosmology meeting at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD. Beth and I travelled together, although she left after one day and I stayed for two. Overall, I had a good time–the talks kept me engaged despite getting up very early and staying up later than I should have.<\/p>\n
I met several people whose papers I’ve cited or read, including James Bullock, Fabio Governato, and Rosemary Wyse. I also met Joe Fowler of Princeton who knows Steve Boughn and Bruce Partridge, both Princeton alums and now professors (or in Bruce’s case professor emeritus) at Haverford. I also chatted with several other folks who gave talks and hung out with several UMD grad students doing physics and\/or astronomy. It’s always interesting to hear about the projects grad students are involved in.<\/p>\n
The conference had a much broader scope than I had anticipated, which is not at all surprising in hindsight. This meant a lot of the talks, particularly the theoretical ones, went a bit over my head. But in many cases I was able to follow along in a general sense and take notes which I followed up on later. In the end, I learned a lot about the larger context of the work I’m doing, from high redshift theoretical work to the near-field observational cosmology I’m used to.<\/p>\n
I don’t have any cool pictures to share, but following in Maya and Oliver’s footsteps, a few highlights:<\/p>\n
– There was sushi and shrimp cocktail at the reception the first night!<\/p>\n
– I learned that the resolution of the Planck Observatory is 1 lunalapin (a unit of measure they made up). That’s equivalent to the body heat emitted by one rabbit on the moon. Get it?? (Hint: luna=moon, lapin=rabbit)<\/p>\n
-I got a ride to the train station from Zackaria Chacko, particle physicist at UMD, after my taxi failed to show. I would’ve missed the train if it hadn’t been for his kindness! He also knows Stephon Alexander, a physics professor at Haverford, and is friends with a Bryn Mawr alum, so we bonded a bit.<\/p>\n
I would count this conference as a successful experience. A lot of great science was presented and I had the opportunity to interact with several of the scientists behind it! Now it’s full speed ahead on my own work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week I got to work and after only 2 days was off to a conference. This time it was the Advances in Theoretical and Observational Cosmology meeting at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD. Beth and I travelled together, although she left after one day and I stayed for two. Overall, I … Continue reading “UMD Cosmology Conference”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/astronoblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/astronoblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/astronoblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/astronoblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/astronoblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/astronoblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/astronoblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/astronoblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.haverford.edu\/astronoblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}