Two thousand astronomers are dragging themselves home from an exciting but exhausting 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Long Beach. After we’ve gotten a good night’s sleep and some strong coffee, how about we discuss what we thought worked, what didn’t and how we can improve the “Super Bowl of Astronomy”? [...]
As always, there’s a lot going on at the Winter AAS Meeting. Below is my annual Twitter pep-talk and a brief description of some of the activities I’ve had a hand in. Twitter Whether or not you are attending the 221st AAS Meeting this week in Long Beach, you can make the conference more fun [...]
Jessica Kirkpatrick recently made the transition from astrophysics researcher to data scientist for a tech company (Microsoft). Her insightful post provides suggestions for people in academia / research who are interested in pursuing a tech job. Astronomer to Data Scientist – Women in Astronomy
The question: “How can I remotely display python graphics windows?” The backstory: I’m gotten used to the nifty interactive graphics of matplotlib in ipython. But here it is New Year’s Eve and I’m working from home. I need to ssh in to my desktop, run python, and remotely display the python graphics windows to my [...]
With funding from the Sloan Foundation, AstroBetter is hiring for three part-time consulting positions! No Astro experience is technically necessary for these positions, but I’m hoping to find folks with some familiarity with science research and I’m thinking one of you might know somebody who is just right! (And if anyone knows where else I [...]
In 2013-14, we plan to provide a series of ~50 weekly blog posts highlighting the full range of career routes that astronomers pursue after their degree. Thanks to those who already provided recommendations for people we should contact. If you have additional recommendations, please email me at l-trouille [at] northwestern.edu with the person’s name and email address. We are [...]
For job interview resources and advice and to help us build our set of quality resources for our community, check out the new post from Laura Trouille (Northwestern University & The Adler Planetarium): ‘Tis the Season: Job Interview Advice – Women in Astronomy
Bottom line: Please consider endorsing the System Roadmap Committee’s Statement with several recommendations regarding the implementation of the NSF/AST Portfolio Review that are intended to reflect the views of the broad community by submitting your name and affiliation on this Google Form. The deadline to endorse is this Friday, December 7, 2012. As I’ve described [...]
Lots of nuggets of wisdom in this article about leadership, productivity, and striving for a deeply fulfilling professional and personal life. Here’s just a few: Value and acknowledge our lives outside of work: We have to encourage people to set boundaries around their work and respect them when they hold them. And I think as [...]
So, it seems physics education in America includes nothing new since 1865, unlike any other field of study, even geology. This is an open letter to Obama asking him to do something about it. All faculty in Physics and Astro Departments need to start chipping away at this problem. (College has to change before high [...]