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Welcome to the three new postdocs who joined the CfCP this fall: Christopher Gordon is a theoretical cosmologist who was most recently at DAMPT (Cambridge). His main research interest is in understanding how the observed inhomogeneities in the Universe can be used to constrain cosmology at early times. Risa Wechsler is a Hubble Fellow and a Fermi Fellow who comes to Chicago from the University of Michigan. Risa is a theoretical cosmologist whose main interest is in galaxy formation and the development of structure in the Universe. Andrew Zentner is also a theoretical cosmologist whose interests are astro-particle physics and cosmology. He completed his PhD at Ohio State University in June 2003, got married in August (Congratulations!) and moved to Chicago in September, where he hopes to recover from his hectic summer! Welcome also to the new graduate students working with CfCP faculty this year: Dante Nakazawa (with Juan Collar), Nicolas Busca (with Angela Olinto) and Matthew Sharp (with John Carlstrom).
We are continually trying to update our web-pages and make them useful
to the CfCP community.
This quarter has already been busy with visitors. Professor Alan Watson (University of Leeds) and Professor Maria Tere Dova (University of La Plata, Argentina) were both here for about two weeks in September-October in connection with the Auger North workshop at Fermi Lab. Professor Tom Weiler (Vanderbilt University) is visiting for the period October 1 – November 30, 2003. His main area of research interest are theoretical physics, elementary particle physics, field theory and cosmology. Tom Weiler will be giving the CfCP Colloquium on Wednesday, October 29. James Bullock (CfA, Harvard) and Arieh Maller (UMass, Amherst) will visit from November 3 – November 9. Ishwaree P. Neupane (National Taiwan University) will visit from December 1 – December 8. A complete list of short term visitors to the center can be found at: http://cfcp.uchicago.edu/visitors/index.html. And a complete list of seminars and colloquia can be found at: http://cfcp.uchicago.edu/seminars/index.html.
"Cosmology with Sunyaev-Zel'dovic Cluster Surveys"
Short Course for Planetarium Staff
Ground-Based Supernova Surveys CfCP members Josh Frieman and Rick Kessler are co-organizing a workshop on Ground Based Supernova surveys. The aim of this workshop is to gather together 20–30 key people involved in on-going and planned surveys to assess their goals and to discuss strategy and coordination. An updated schedule and logistical information is available at: http://cfcp.uchicago.edu/workshops/supernova2003/.
Please join us in wishing farewell to Noella D'Cruz, our "Science Communications and Media Specialist," who has assumed a faculty position in the Physics Department at DePaul University. Although she was only with CfCP a short while, she was instrumental in the development of three new experimental Web pages as well as many updates to other parts of our Web site. We will miss her and wish her the best in her new job. We are looking for someone who may be interested in spending part of their time developing Web pages with scientific content about cosmology and our research activities for the public. If you know of someone who is interested in doing this (or are interested in this yourself), please let us know.
There have been 12 new publications co-authored by CfCP members since the last issue of the news letter. These are listed below. astro-ph/0307101 astro-ph/0307335 astro-ph/0307350 astro-ph/0307375 astro-ph/0308049 astro-ph/0308418 astro-ph/0308519 astro-ph/0308443 astro-ph/0308478 astro-ph/0309610 2003Natur.424.1007C astro-ph/0310342 |
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There
has been a great deal of excitement with "First Light" with the VERITAS
prototype telescope which was installed in June and updates are available
(
The
SZA Project has a new web-page (
The
EDGE project also has a new web-page: 
The
main aim of the workshop was to bring together people working on using
large surveys of clusters of galaxies for precision cosmology. There
were talks from observers, theorists, and experimentalists with lots
of discussions. The workshop was organized by Lloyd Knox (UC
Davis), John Carlstrom (CfCP) and Andrey Kravtsov (CfCP),
Aus Evrard (Michigan) and Martin White (UC Berkeley).
Slides of most of the talks from the workshop are now available on-line
at: 
The CfCP offered a pioneering short course titled "Origin of Structure
in the Universe" for planetarium staff aimed at incorporating modern
cosmology into planetarium shows and exhibits for the public. The course
was attended by over 30 participants from around the world (mainly the
US midwest). Course Directors Sean Carroll and Randy Landsberg
and many CfCP faculty, fellows, students, and associates contributed
to making this a very rich and exciting event for the participants.
Bruce and Randy participated in a follow-up Session last week (Oct 22nd)
at the annual meeting of the Great Lakes Planetarium Association where
they spent time discussing ideas with workshop participants for planetarium
shows on cosmology.
On
Monday, August 18, 2003, CfCP sponsored an informal lunch discussion
on "Women in Physical Sciences." The key speaker was Dr. Grace Wolf-Chase,
Research Scientist, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Astronomer,
Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum. Grace recently attended "Women
in Astronomy II," 
a
conference on the status of women in Astronomy, that was held in Pasadena,
CA in June. She gave an overview of the main discussions that took place
in the conference. There were over 35 women scientists (undergrads,
graduate students, postdocs and faculty) in the audience (and 2 men)
and it was widely agreed that we need to continue such discussions.