UT Austin Graduate Student Postdoc Seminar (GSPS), Spring 2014

Every other Friday, 4-5pm, (mostly) in the Astro Classroom (15.216B)

Description/Motivation (cribbed from UC Berkeley's GSPS page):

GSPS is a place where students and postdocs can practice giving talks.
Topics of the talks can be just about anything: their own research (either completed or commencing), career advancement and advice, pedagogy talks, practice exam talks, job talks, topics that aren't usually covered in other seminars, etc.
GSPS meets every other week during the semester (modulo University holidays).
The aim is to have one graduate student and one postdoc talk each session.
Talks should be 15-20 minutes + 10-15 minutes for discussion and questions.
Talks should emphasize background material.
No faculty allowed. Only graduate students, postdocs, and early career research staff are allowed.
GSPS is a good place to:
- promote community between grad students and postdocs
- practice speaking and discussing your research
- feel comfortable asking lots of questions
- learn about topics outside your own research
- learn about applicable non-science topics
If you would like feedback on your presentation, the organizer(s) would be happy to take notes and discuss it with you afterwards (and/or ask other audience members to do so).

Organizer: Jeffrey Silverman (JSilverman.at.astro.dot.as.dot.utexas.dot.edu). Please contact me if you have questions, comments, complaints, or requests for future topics or snacks and thanks for participating in GSPS!

Current Semester Schedule:

Date	Grad	Topic/Title	Postdoc/Researcher	Topic/Title
1/17	C. Lindner	Academia Shmacadamia: A primer on non-academic jobs for astronomers	R. Livermore	Part of Your World: The Many (British) Adventures of Dr. Rachael Livermore
1/31	M. Gully-Santiago	git Down and Funky: Data Science in Astronomy (Part 1: git and GitHub)	A. Mann	KICking Ass and Taking Spectra: Andrew Mann and the KICASS Project
2/14¹	C. Safranek-Shrader	Please Stop Using Blinking Text and Tiled, Low-Res Background Images: Fundamentals of Web Design	E. Noyola	Dónde Jugarán las Astrónomas? Astronomical Adventures in Mexico and Germany
2/28	----------	----------	M. Pavel	SUCCESSFULLY Finding a Job Outside of Academia
3/21	R. Ludwig	What the Hell is a Teaching Statement and How to Write a Good One	S. Meschiari	Super-Addictive Games To Get People Hooked on Astronomy: You, Too, Can Make Spiffy Online Web Apps for Outreach and $$$
4/4	K. Bell & M. Johnson	Telescopes and CCDs and Spectrographs, oh my! Observing at McDonald, LCOGT, and SALT	Physics Grad Students	Watermelon Drop
4/18	J. Hummel	Why Python is Awesome: Using Python for Fun and Profit	A. McKay	Of Comets, Cats, and External Advisors
5/9			S. Tuttle	HETDEX: A Walking Tour

¹Will be held in Evans Conference Room (RLM 15.202A).

Possible other topics:

teaching theories, pedagogy, kinesthetic learning, and best practices (Ludwig? Spencer Martin?)
CVs, resumes, and LinkedIn profiles
applying to postdocs, fellowships, etc.
applying to faculty positions (Pooley)
writing grant and telescope/computing time proposals
public outreach
star parties and running a telescope: Dobsonian, solar, rooftop (Lara Eakins?)
social media, AstroBetter, astro blogs, blogging, Tweeting, YouTubing
scripting ds9 (Kaplan)
coding/software (bitbucket, Flash, MESA, Cloudy, runmycode, astroML, MCMC, emcee, Papers2, rescuetime, productivity suites, BibDesk, JabRef, zotero, PHP)
giving good public talks
giving good science talks
putting together good talks, PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Docs, Beamer/LaTeX, Prezi
putting together good posters, Adobe InDesign
Imposter Syndrome
science policy
CS and/or stat department mixer
basic Korean
preview of next semester's colloquia

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number AST-1302771.