UT Austin Astronomy Graduate Student Postdoc Seminar (GSPS), Spring 2019
Every other Friday, 4:00-5:00pm, in the Astro Classroom (15.216B) or Evans Conference Room (15.202A)
Past semesters:
- GSPS is a place where students and postdocs can practice giving talks or share information and knowledge that others might not have.
- Topics of the presentations can be just about anything: their own research (either completed or commencing), career advancement and advice,
pedagogy and teaching, practice/job talks, software packages/languages and apps, topics that aren't usually covered in other seminars, etc.
- GSPS meets every other week during the semester (modulo University holidays).
- There will be one main presentation/talk/workshop each session, led by one to a few people.
- Presentations should leave plenty of time for group work and/or discussion and questions.
- Presentations should emphasize background material so everyone is on the same page.
- 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 new techniques and tools for 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).
Organizers: Patrick Drew (pdrew{at}utexas{dot}edu) & Sydney Sherman (ssherman{at}astro{dot}as{dot}utexas{dot}edu). Webmaster: Samuel Factor (sfactor{at}astro{dot}as{dot}utexas{dot}edu). Please contact us if you have questions, comments, complaints, or requests for future topics or snacks and thanks for participating in GSPS!
GSPS Founding Father: Jeffrey Silverman (JSilverman{at}astro{dot}as{dot}utexas{dot}edu)
Current Semester Schedule:
- practice your second year defense talk
- using git and GitHub
- making a professional website (with GitHub?!)
- adventures in your homeland (or homecity) or your summer conference tour
- writing a teaching statement
- another CV roast
- good interview skills
- non-academic job market info (preparing, applying, resumes, interviewing, details of the job, etc.)
- Insight Data Science Fellows Program (Emily McLinden, Jeff Silverman)
- scientific ethics
- putting together good posters (PowerPoint, Adobe InDesign)
- astro-related social media, AstroBetter, astro blogs, blogging, Tweeting, YouTubing
- astronomy ecosystem online (Facebook, Twitter, etc)
- posting talks and slides online (speakerdeck, slideshare)
- how astronomers use Python, a collaboration with Continuum (Kris Overholt & Peter Wang)
- coding/software (sublime text 3, bitbucket, Flash, MESA, Cloudy, runmycode, astroML, MCMC, emcee, Papers2, rescuetime, productivity suites, BibDesk, JabRef, zotero, PHP, python, IPython notebooks, LaTeX, DS9)
- what's your software stack and why? what tools do you use for which tasks?
- what do you want improved so that you can put out more papers?
- CS and/or stat department mixer
- basic Korean
- preview of next semester's colloquia