|
|
|
|
Welcoming 2 new Ph.D. students |
2020 August 1 — I'm delighted to welcome two new Ph.D. students to my research group, officially beginning this fall! Sabrina DeSoto is a second-year Ph.D. student at DU who completed a first-year project on light pollution with my colleague Bob Stencel. Sabrina attended Quest University in Canada and studied star clusters in an REU project at Lehigh University. New Ph.D. student Christopher Pickens earned an MS in astrophysics from Johns Hopkins University and has many years of teaching experience; he has most recently worked as an Educator Performer at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Chris joins us with the support of a Dean's Fellowship from the DU College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. Both Sabrina and Chris have been enthusiastically contributing to research this summer and are excited to continue in the coming school year!
|
NSF funds archival supernova project |
2020 June 27 — Colleague Douglas Leonard (SDSU) and I received good news this week: our recent proposal to conduct a large-scale spectropolarimetric supernova (SN) population study was funded by NSF! This project will mine the largest-ever database of SN spectropolarimetry, compiled by the SNSPOL Project between 2011–2018. Doug and I were collaborators on that project, which was led by G. Grant Williams (U. Arizona) and used U. of A. instruments and facilities. We will continue to work closely with our Arizona colleagues as we work to bring the data from the SNSPOL project to life! Read the project abstract here:
Collaborative Research: Mapping the Supernova Polarization Landscape
|
Fourth Ph.D. awarded from my group |
2020 June 10 — Ph.D. student Andrew Fullard has successfully defended his dissertation, "A Spectropolarimetric Study of Southern WR + O Binaries". Because of the ongoing pandemic, Andrew's defense was held virtually via Zoom, which allowed many far-flung friends, relatives, and colleagues to participate. (Email me for the recording link!) Collaborator Nicole St-Louis (U. Montréal) served as an external committee member. Andrew will begin a postdoctoral research position with Wolfgang Kerzendorf (Michigan State U.) in the fall. He is the fourth Ph.D. student to graduate from my research group, and we are proud of his excellent observational and computational work! Congratulations, Andrew!
|
|