Organizer: Reinabelle Reyes

This quarter's Postdoc Symposium will be on March 15, 9:30AM-12PM.

The program:

09:30-09:55

Stephen Hoover - Measuring the Polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background

09:55-10:20

Reina Reyes - Is LambdaCDM consistent with the Tully-Fisher relation

10:20-10:45

Suman Bhattacharya

10:45-11:10

Ali Vanderveld - Weak lensing with the Euclid mission

11:10-11:35

Peter Adshead

Lunch, followed by Friday noon seminar (Megan Eckart)

Related Links:
KICP Members: Peter Adshead; Suman Bhattacharya; Stephen Hoover; Reinabelle Reyes; Ali Vanderveld

Organizer: Reinabelle Reyes

On Thursday 6 December, we will host the Fall 2012 Postdoc symposium in the LASR conference room. It will take place from 10AM pm to 12:30PM. After the talks, we will all have pizza for lunch.

Speakers:
(20-minute talk, with ~5 minutes for questions)

• Keith Bechtol,"Contribution of Hadronic Processes to the Isotropic Diffuse Gamma-ray Background"
• Doug Watson,"On the relation between satellite and central galaxies and their host dark matter halos since z=2"
• Mark Wyman, "Massive gravity: solutions and perturbations"
• Andrew McCann, "Giant Radio Pulses: A search for correlated incoherent emission"
• Marilena LoVerde

Related Links:
KICP Members: Keith Bechtol; Marilena LoVerde; Andrew McCann; Reinabelle Reyes; Douglas Watson; Mark Wyman

Organizers: Anupreeta More, Oscar Agertz, Ali Vanderveld, Peter Adshead

On Friday June 1, we will host the Spring Postdoc symposium in the LASR conference room. It will take place from from 9:30 AM to 12:30 PM followed by lunch.

Schedule:

9:30-9:55

Maria Monasor, "Microwave detection of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays"

9:55-10:20

Jeff Grube, "VERITAS observations of Galactic particle accelerators"

10:20-10:45

Stephen Hoover, "The Birth of SPTpol"

10:45-10:55

Break

10:55-11:20

Brad Benson, "SPT-3G: Building the Science Case and the Design for the Next Generation Camera on SPT"

11:20-11:45

Yuko Kakazu, "Deep Spectroscopy of High-redshift (4 < z < 6) galaxies in the COSMOS field

11:45-12:10

Suman Bhattacharya, "Dark Matter Halo Profilesof Massive Clusters: Theory vs. Observations"

Related Links:
KICP Members: Peter Adshead; Oscar Agertz; Bradford A. Benson; Suman Bhattacharya; Stephen Hoover; Akito Kusaka; Maria Monasor; Anupreeta More; Ali Vanderveld
Scientific projects: South Pole Telescope (SPT); Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS)

Organizer: Oscar Agertz

On Thursday 15 March, we will host the next Postdoc symposium in the LASR conference room. It will take place from 1.30 pm to 5 pm. There will be food and snacks in the beginning and pizza at the end.
Speakers:

• Craig Booth, "Feedback and Galaxy Formation: From Small Scales to Large"
• Claudio Ugalde, "The Superheated Target for Astrophysics Research"
• Surhud More, "How accurate is our knowledge of the galaxy bias?"
• Rahul Biswas, "Topics in Supernova Cosmology"
• Peter Adshead, "Chromo-Natural Inflation"
• Will High, "Weak gravitational lensing by galaxy clusters in the South Pole Telescope survey"
• Michael Solontoi, TBA
• Eduardo Rozo, "A Fully Self-Consistent Picture of Galaxy Cluster Abundances and Optical, X-ray, and SZ Scaling Relations"

Related Links:
KICP Members: Peter Adshead; Oscar Agertz; Craig Booth; Fredrick W. High; Surhud More; Eduardo Rozo; Claudio Ugalde

Organizer: Oscar Agertz

Schedule (20 + 5 minute talks):

2:00 - 2:15

Coffee and cookies

2:15 - 2:40

Elise Jennings: "Testing LCDM using the large scale structure of the Universe"

2:40 - 3:05

Ali Vanderveld: "Testing the smooth dark energy paradigm with weak lensing"

3:05 - 3:30

Reina Reyes: "Disk galaxy masses: constraints on DM and stellar mass content from galaxy kinematics and weak lensing"

3:30 - 3:50

Break

3:50 - 4:15

Oscar Agertz: "Stellar feedback in cosmological simulations"

4:15 - 4:40

Andrew McCann: "The First VHE Gamma-ray Pulsar"

4:40 -

Pizza!

Related Links:
KICP Members: Oscar Agertz; Elise Jennings; Andrew McCann; Reinabelle Reyes; Ali Vanderveld

Organizer: Eric Dahl

Speakers:
(15-20 ) + 5 minute talks

Luis Reyes

"The turn-on of a gamma-ray blazar"

Surhud More

"Friends-of-friends algorithm: a percolation theory perspective"

Doug Spolyar

"TeV Inflation"

Benjamin Rouille d'Orfeuil

"EeV Neutron Astronomy"

Stephen Hoover

"When a Continent Is Your Detector: Cosmic rays in Antarctica"

Jennifer Sobeck

"Galactic Chemodynamics"

Related Links:
KICP Members: Eric Dahl; Surhud More; Luis C. Reyes; Benjamin Rouille d'Orfeuil; Jennifer Sobeck; Douglas Spolyar

Organizer: Eric Dahl

Speakers:
(15-20 ) + 5 minute talks

• Eric Switzer, "Understanding the z~1 universe with 21 cm emission"
• Akito Kusaka, "Systematic error in QUIET (good and bad examples)"
• Keren Sharon, "Results from the largest cluster lens surveys: SDSS and RCS2 giant arcs surveys"
• Mark Wyman, "Massive gravity modifications to gravitational lensing"
• Tom Plagge, "High-resolution Sunayev-Zel'dovich Cluster Observations with CARMA"
• Will High, "SPT has an optical guy!"

Related Links:
KICP Members: Eric Dahl; Fredrick W. High; Akito Kusaka; Tom Plagge; Keren Sharon; Eric Switzer
Scientific projects: Q/U Imaging ExperimenT (QUIET); Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS); South Pole Telescope (SPT)

Speakers:

• Eric Dahl, "WIMP Hunters: 6800 feet under the tundra"
• Robert Feldman, "Revisiting star formation laws"
• Kim Arvidsson, "Star-forming environments of three Galactic halo HII regions"
• Michael Solonti, "Looking for lava in all the wrong places"
• Maria Monasor, "From Auger to MIDAS: the ongoing search for the most energetic particles
• Oscar Agertz, "Cosmological simulations of disk galaxy formation"
• Eduardo Rozo, "LRG Selection and Weak Lensing"
• Bradford Benson, "The History and the Future of Studying the Big Bang from the South Pole
• Jared Mehl, "Building detectors for mm-wave astronomy"

Related Links:
KICP Members: Oscar Agertz; Bradford A. Benson; Eric Dahl; Robert Feldmann; Jared Mehl; Maria Monasor; Eduardo Rozo

Organizers: Keren Sharon, Maria Monasor

SCHEDULE:

1:30 - 1:45

Coffee and cookies

1:45 - 2:10

Doug Spolyar, "Neutrinos and dark matter"

2:15 - 2:40

Benjamin Rouille, "A few grams of matter in a bright world"

2:45 - 3:10

Amol Upadhye, "Modified gravity in a relativistic star"

3:10 - 3:30

Break

3:30 - 3:55

Carla Frohlich, "Nucleosynthesis Processes in Core Collapse Supernovae"

4:00 - 4:25

Jennifer Sobeck, "Far from ordinary: Chemical Abundances and the Characteristics of Stellar Populations"

4:30 - 4:55

Eduardo Rozo, "Measuring Cluster Masses With Stacked Weak Lensing"

5:00 -

.... Pizza, etc.

Related Links:
KICP Members: Maria Monasor; Benjamin Rouille d'Orfeuil; Eduardo Rozo; Keren Sharon; Jennifer Sobeck; Douglas Spolyar; Amol Ravindra Upadhye

Organizer: Eduardo Rozo

The KICP and astronomy postdocs would like to announce a new initiative. Once per quarter (summer quarter excluded), we will hold a postdoc symposium for one afternoon, during which time 8 of us will present some aspect of our current research.

The symposium is meant to be extremely informal, and we will aim to be super-clear and low-level: we want our presentations to be understandable by everyone!

Our first symposium will take place on Monday, Feb. 22, starting at 1:30 pm.
We'll have brief talks from 8 of our postdocs from 1:30 - 5:00 with a coffee break in the middle, and we will finish it off with some pizza, soda, and good company.

Schedule:

1:30-1:55

Benjamin Koester, "The Beginning of the End: Pinpointing the Galaxy Cluster Red Sequence from 0.1

1:55-2:20

Bradford Benson, "Learning About Clusters and Structure Formation using the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect"

2:20-2:45

Eric Switzer, "Counts Statistics of the Source Population Observed at Millimeter Wavelengths"

2:45-3:10

Jared Mehl, "Designing the Next Generation SPTpol Receiver"

3:10-3:30

Coffee break

3:30-3:55

Maria Beltran, "Maverick Dark Matter at Colliders"

3:55-4:20

Nahee Park, "High Energy Cosmic Ray Measurements with Balloon Experiments"

4:20-4:45

Sheng Wang, "Capturing Non-Gaussianity in Weak Lensing Surveys"

4:45-5:10

Surhud More, "Galaxy-Dark Matter Connection: A Visual Guide"

Related Links:
KICP Members: Maria Beltran; Bradford A. Benson; Benjamin Koester; Jared Mehl; Surhud More; Nahee Park; Eduardo Rozo; Eric Switzer; Sheng Wang