Galaxy Zoo Starburst Talk

Hello!

  • trouille by trouille scientist, moderator, admin

    JeanTate had a great idea in this post. Let's give it a try.

    The goal of this chat board is to provide a place where people within our GZ Quench community can get to know one another. It might help facilitate the science conversations we're hoping to promote and support in the rest of the site.

    A little about me. I'm an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium and Northwestern University. I did my PhD on supermassive black holes in the centers of distant galaxies with Dr. Amy Barger. She was an excellent mentor in many ways (and still is!). She was particularly good at making her thought process on research questions transparent -- modeling the behavior and process for how to make sense of observational data.

    I then did a postdoc at Northwestern University. When a joint appointment opened up between Northwestern and the Adler, I jumped at it. It was perfect -- I could pursue both my astronomy research and my love of outreach (and be valued for both!).

    In grad school I was a roller derbier with the Mad Rollin Dolls. Can anyone guess what my derby name was? Just think what the perfect name would be for an astronomer-derbier, and you'll guess it.

    I'm half French and really looking forward to an upcoming trip to France in October to visit my grandmother. I always find a way to visit her after a conference. This time it's an International Astronomical Union conference in Armenia on Multiwavelength Studies of Active Galactic Nuclei.

    OK, that's all for now. It'd be great to hear a little bit about all of you. And now off to check on new updates to Tools.

    Posted

  • trouille by trouille scientist, moderator, admin

    To respond to a question from here, I'm the lead scientist for GZ Quench. PI (Principal Investigator) could be a term that works, but in the context of this project, I prefer the term lead scientist. When I started in my current position as an astronomer at the Adler, I really wanted to find a way to extend Zooniverse to provide citizen scientists the opportunity to experience science from beginning to end. After conversations with Zooniverse (specifically Stuart Lynn and Laura Whyte) about possibilities, our post-quenched galaxy sample and research question ('What quenches star formation in these galaxies?') emerged as a good first experiment.

    Posted