Pizza Lunch, Spring 2011
Pizza lunch is a proud and venerable tradition of the Columbia Astronomy department, whose only constants seem to be the eating of pizza and the giving of announcements. Three or four presenters will be scheduled each week to guide discussions or presentations on topics of their choosing, though we will attempt to add in any spontaneous contributions as well. Each presenter is expected to speak / guide discussion for between 10 and 15 minutes.
Pizza is $1 per slice for members of the department to defray costs. Visitors eat free of charge.
Read below for the intended format of the presentations.
| Date | Who | Subject | Who | Subject | Who | Subject | Who | Subject | ||||
| Feb. 1 | Eric Gotthelf | Anti-Magnetars | Matt Turk | First Stars | ||||||||
| Feb. 8 | Frits Paerels | Gravitational wave astronomy | Nithya | Transients in FIRST | ||||||||
| Feb. 15 | Sjoert van Velzen | Tidal disruption events | Alex | Material Science conference | ||||||||
| Feb. 22 | Jules | Magnetars | Jemma | Pop III stars | ||||||||
| Mar. 1 | Jules | MDM | Joo | recent paper | Zoltan | recent conference | ||||||
| Mar. 8 | Ivan | Magnetars | Kristen | WD tidal stripping | ||||||||
| Mar. 22 | David S. | GALEX transits | Ryan | Halo clouds | ||||||||
| Mar. 29 | Joe | Precession of the Moon | ||||||||||
| Apr. 5 | Ron Ekers | 21cm detection project | Xiuyuan | Weak lensing peaks | ||||||||
| Apr. 12 | David H. | AAS Future | Jules | New type of X-ray transient | ||||||||
| Apr. 19 | Munier | Grad. Project | Frits | From IXO to Lazarus | Jennifer | Grad. Project | | | |||||
| Apr. 26 | Daniel Szomoru | compact galaxies at z=2 | Marcel | MEARIM-II conference, SA | Blake & James Bullock | |||||||
| May 3 | Laura & David | Senior Theses | Lauren & Brandon | Grad. Projects | ||||||||
The presentations should fit one or more of the following descriptions:
— Casual, but well researched, discussions and questions about topics relevant to astronomy today. The speaker need not get up from her seat, and discussions do not need to have visual aides.
— Presentations of recent work by the author or others, with a focus on interesting, provocative results. Presenters are encouraged to pose genuine questions to the group. We strongly encourage presenters to limit themselves to presenting 2 relevant figures from the work, either through the projector or through handouts. A whiteboard is provided; we strongly encourage speakers to take advantage of it.
— "Advertisements" of ongoing or recent work, especially by visitors or new department members. These should not be cohesive, slide-heavy "talks", but should rather be the presentation of a few interesting results or ideas that the speaker is interested in discussing with members of the department during her stay.
Pizza lunch is not a space for formal "talks", and especially not talks based heavily on slideware. Wednesday colloquium and Thursday seminar is the appropriate department venue for such talks. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, we want to make this space available for a more informal mode of group communication. Secondly, all graduate students are required (see the graduate student handbook) to speak at pizza lunch once each year, and we do not want to put the onus upon them to make overwrought slide presentations.
Hosts are responsible for communicating the (admittedly somewhat strange) format of pizza lunch to their visitors. If either you or your visitors do not follow the format of pizza lunch you will be treated to either the quiet but stern disapproval of Ryan or being hung out the 13th floor by your ears by Josh.
