Emily's Universe

Grad School Projects and Lunch Talks

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During my years in grad school at the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State University, it was bound to happen that I'd have to do little research projects for some of the graduate courses I take. And also, yeah, lunch talks, journal talks, stuff like that... So, here they are (most recent first).

Research Lunch Talk (Spring 2007)

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During the Spring 2007 semester I drove up to Penn State from Goddard to do a lunch talk about my research. The title of the presentation was "Black Hole Mergers as Probes of Structure Formation", which is the title of my thesis, and the talk was on 6 March 2007.

Journal Talk (Spring 2006)

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During the Spring 2006 semester I had to do a journal talk, and I picked a paper by Cole Miller titled "Constraints on Alternatives to Supermassive Black Holes" (astro-ph/0512194). The presentation was on 28 February 2006.

Gwaves/Compact Objects Seminar (Fall 2005)

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One of our graduation requirements is to take three one-credit seminar courses. By the time I started working in Goddard, I had already taken two such seminars, so I needed one more. However, I would only be back in Penn State for the Spring 2006 semester to teach Astro 11 and then I'd be back in Goddard indefinitely, so there really was no good time to take the one-credit seminar that I needed. Fortunately, I was able to request a substitution. In Goddard, Cole Miller had been conducting a seminar series titled Gravitational Waves from Compact Objects, which consisted of weekly meetings to discuss recent papers in the field of gravitational waves and compact objects. I led the discussion of astro-ph/0503511 on 7 November 2005. Since this included a presentation as well as leading the discussion, it pretty much qualifies as the equivalent of a one-credit seminar, and thus I was able to fill that requirement while at Goddard.

Astro 513, "Observational Astrophysics: Part 2" (Spring 2005)

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I took an Observational Astrophysics class in the Spring 2005 semester. The first half of the semester was about optical and IR astronomy, and it was taught by Larry Ramsey. The second half of the semester was taught by Alex Wolszczan and it was focused on radio astronomy and radio interferometry. In this second half of the course, we were divided in teams of two and we did a little research (and presentations) on some major radio telescopes. My teammate was Nikola Milutinović. The first assignment was on big single-dish radiotelescopes, and our presentation was about the Arecibo Radiotelescope (I was very happy with this one), on 30 March 2005. The second assignment was on unfilled-aperture radiotelescopes, and our presentation was about the RATAN (Radio Teleskop Akademii Nauk), on 13 April 2005 (and Nikola was very happy with this one). The last assignment was about interferometers. Our presentation was on various East-West Arrays, and it was on 22 April 2005. The presentations are all here, but note that they are big files (lots of pictures, ya know)...

Astro 597A, "Gamma Ray Bursts" (Spring 2005)

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During the Spring 2005 semester, I took a seminar on Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) taught by Peter Mészáros, one of the leading theorists in the field. After a few introductory lectures, the students were presented with a choice of topics for an hour-long presentation and a 20-page paper. I chose for my talk and paper "Gravitational Waves from Gamma-Ray Bursts". It's a really cool topic that interests me a lot, and I had a lot of fun doing the work for the talk and the paper. I concentrated mostly on possible sources and mechanisms: the different scenarios that could lead to a GRB and a (preferably simultaneous) gravitational wave detection. My talk was on 12 April 2005, and the paper was turned in on 26 April 2005.

Astro 597A, "X-Ray Investigations of AGNs" (Fall 2004)

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During the Fall 2004 semester I took a 3 credit class (structured like a seminar, but counting as a course requirement) on Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs). The class met twice a week. There were weekly readings of 4-5 journal articles and sometimes textbook readings, along with Chandra and XMM Proposal Guide readings (because the final project was to write a proposal to observe an AGN with one of these two instruments). Each Monday there was a student presentation on the week's topic, and on Wednesday the professor (Niel Brandt) covered the rest of the material for the week. On Week 7 the topic was "Related Accreting Systems: Galactic Black Hole Binaries and Ultraluminous X-ray Sources". That week (more specifically, on 18 October 2004) was my turn to do the student presentation. My talk was titled "Galactic Black Hole Binaries: Miniature versions of AGNs", and in the title slide I had a picture of Dr. Evil next to an AGN model and a picture of Mini-Me next to a GBHB artist rendition (hehehe, I love my title slide, and people seemed to like it too).

My Chandra proposal for the final project was titled "Using Chandra Spectroscopy to Look for the Binary SMBH in OJ 287". It was pretty much about looking at this AGN called OJ 287 to look for signs of a binary SMBH at the center. I chose that object because it shows x-ray and optical outbursts with a period of about 12 years. The proposal might not be very good because I'm a theorist and I had never written any kind of proposal, let alone an observing proposal, but I did my best...

Research Lunch Talk (Fall 2004)

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During the Fall 2004 semester, I was required -as a second year grad student- to carry out a research project and to give a research lunch talk on the research that I had done over the previous summer. My summer research has extended and turned into my Fall Project, and so my research lunch talk was basically the same talk I did in Goddard at the end of the summer, but with more technical details. The title of the talk was "Massive Black Hole Binary Merger Rates in a Hierarchical Model of Structure Formation", and the date of this presentation was 12 October 2004.

Astro 530, "Stellar Atmospheres" (Spring 2004)

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For Astro 530 we had to do final group projects. I was in a group with Justin Crepp and Anand Narayanan and our topic was "HD 101065: Przybylski's Star". Isn't that an interesting name? Slavic languages are really cool. They sound so weird and so totally different from Spanish (and English too, for that matter). Anyway, the presentation was on 28 April 2004, and here it is, along with the handout and report...

Journal Talk (Spring 2004)

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During Spring Semester 2004 I had to do my first journal talk (graduation requirement). I chose to talk about Sean Carroll's "Why is the Universe Accelerating?" (astro-ph/0310342). My presentation was on 16 March 2004, and well, here it is...

Astro 501, "Introductory Astronomy" (Fall 2003)

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For Astro 501, my project was titled "Cepheid Variable Stars as Distance Indicators". My presentation was on 24 November 2003, and I also wrote a report which was due two weeks after the presentation...

Last Updated: 21 February 2008