NSF Faculty and Student Teams (FaST) 2009
For the Summer of 2009 we continued our research begun last summer. Hakeem traveled to Seattle with 2 new students. You can read about our research in the LSST Newsletter. Our nifty picture this year is from a Mariners game!
UW FaST Team 2009.
NSF Faculty and Student Teams (FaST) 2008
Summer 2008 we started a program to increase diversity in the Large Synpotic Survey Telescope (LSST) Collaboration. I lead a team at UW, and we also had teams at Brookhaven National Lab (BNL) and Stanford (SLAC). We at UW had the pleasure of working with Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi from the Florida Institute of Technology for an intensive 9 week program, along with two of his students Chris Culliton and Muhammad Furqan.
UW FaST Team.
The project began the study of how well LSST will be able to characterize periodic variability using a lightcurve simulation tool built at UW. The team learned the Python programming language, the science goals and technical design of LSST, studied characterization of RR Lyrae stars and their scientific uses, and are now in the process of quantifying LSST's ability to discriminate between subclasses of RR Lyrae. They will present this research at the 2009 All Hands meeting, and we expect this will lead to an article in a refereed Journal. Overall this was a great experience and opened many doors for all of us involved.
Pre-MAP
I recently participated in the first (and second now!) University of Washington "Pre-Major in Astronomy Program" (Pre-MAP), which provides research opportunities for traditionally underrepresented freshmen. Pre-MAP is designed to reinforce interest in science and astronomy in minorities and women. It also provides an important venue for one-on-one interaction between student and scientist in what is traditionally an anonymous and daunting freshman year at a large University. I am encouraging and assisting two of the women I advised this year to participate in the University of Washington's Undergraduate Research Symposium. This provides an opportunity for exposure and resume building in just the first year of college, an important milestone for keeping the students excited about science and confident in their ability to work in the field. I will continue serving as teacher and mentor to these students, as well as students from future Pre-MAP cohorts.
At the Research Symposium
Below is our brochure, nicely rendered by Eric Hilton. You can also find .pdf files here and here.
Contact Pre-MAP
My students, Amber Almy and Amy Rose (both in the brochure above!), are currently learning the basics of astronomical image processing and photometry, and I hope to have some fun results here soon! Indeed, LOADS of full results and press. See here.