Department Lunch Talks

Weekly talk series with three 12+4 minute talks, typically featuring two local scientists and the scheduled astronomy colloquium speaker.  Subjects include not only personal scientific research, but also arXiv/journal-club style reports, education and public outreach efforts, science policy, and professional development issues.

Day and Time: Thursdays at 12:30 (Berkeley time, so 12:40–1:30)
Location: 131 Campbell Hall (rooms A & B)
Organizer: Ryan Chornock

To volunteer for a talk, please e-mail Ryan (chornock@berkeley.edu).  Berkeley graduate students and postdocs are given priority for talks, but visiting scientists and collaborators are also welcome to present.  Visitors should have their local hosts contact Ryan to facilitate scheduling their talk.

Speakers are recommended to bring their own laptop, pointer, and, if necessary, a cable adapter (we have HDMI and USB-C).  Presentations may also use the whiteboard.  Please contact Ryan ahead of time for any special accommodations.

Fall 2025 Schedule


August 28

  • 1-minute colloquium (department intro)

September 4

  • Grad Outreach Committee – Outreach Opportunities this Year!
  • Daniel Brethauer (Berkeley) – Non-Thermal Ionization of Kilonova Ejecta: Observable Impacts
  • Ilaria Pascucci (Arizona) -- Colloquium speaker

September 11

  • Joseph Farah (UCSB) – The First Four Years of SN 1993J Revisited

  • Maria Charisi (WSU) -- Challenges in detecting supermassive black hole binaries in time-domain surveys

September 18

  • Jean Somalwar (Berkeley) – A truly hostless radio transient in the COSMOS field

  • Calvin Leung (Berkeley) – Stellar Feedback and FRBs

  • Emmanuel Schaan (Stanford) – New imprints of gas density, rotation and transverse motion onto the CMB

September 25

  • Scott Lucchini (CfA) -- Simulating the Circumgalactic Medium at 200 pc

  • Genevieve Schroeder (Cornell) – Where Are All of the Off-Axis GRBs? A Late-Time Radio Campaign of Ic Broad Line Supernovae

  • Ana Bonaca (Carnegie) -- An IMBH in the LMC? A hypervelocity star survey in the south

October 2

  • Jackie Blaum Hough (Berkeley) – The Convergence Crisis: Fixing MCMC Practices in Astronomy

  • Sean Li (Berkeley) -- Probing Hubble Tension Systematics with TRGB and JAGB Distance Indicators

  • Joyce Yen (Washington) -- Moving from Reactive to Creative

October 9

  • Tamojeet Roychowdhury (Berkeley) -- The innermost arcseconds of the Galactic Centre in mid-IR
  • Hannah Gulick (Berkeley) -- Creating CuRIOS-ED: the trials, tribulations, triumphs, and technology
  • Vedant Chandra (CfA) -- Tales from the Distant Horizon of the Milky Way

October 16

  • Dom Rowan (Berkeley) -- Discovering the Hidden Population of Quiescent Black Holes
  • Orion Ning (Berkeley) -- Dark Particles and Bright Bursts: Future Stories from the Gamma-Ray Sky with GALAXIS
  • William Urdahl (Berkeley) – Probe of Dark Matter Micro-halos on Solar System Scales with Highly Magnified Individual Stars in the Lensed Dragon Arc

October 23

  • Luca Boccioli (Berkeley) -- Explosion Properties and Nucleosynthesis with 1D+ CCSNe simulations

  • Emiko Gardiner (Berkeley) -- From Background to Brightest: Predicting the First Continuous Gravitational Wave

  • Harley Katz (U Chicago) -- Machine Learned Closures for Three-Moment Radiation Transport

October 30

  • Abby Lee (Berkeley) – Resolved Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars as Probes of Galaxy Evolution

  • Anna Pusack (Berkeley) – Unveiling a CO-Emitting Source in the Galactic Center

  • Sally Oey (Michigan) -- Massive Star Feedback at Low Metallicity:  Radiation vs SN-dominated

November 6

  • Nayana AJ (Berkeley) – The Most Luminous Known Fast Blue Optical Transient AT2024wpp: Unprecedented Evolution and Properties in the X-rays and Radio

  • Gourav Khullar (Washington) – Catching galaxies napping with JWST: Stochastic Star Formation Histories in Post-Starburst Galaxies at Cosmic Dawn

  • Xiaosheng Huang (USF) -- Targeted Search for Lensed Supernovae and Modeling Them with GIGA-Lens

November 13

  • Tyler Cox (Berkeley) -- Validating the HERA 21cm Power Spectrum Pipeline with the Fast Visibility Simulator fftvis
  • Itai Sfaradi (Berkeley) – The first radio-bright TDE around an off-nuclear MBH
  • Nick Stone (Wisconsin-Madison) -- Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals: Old Questions for Future Detectors

November 20

  • Ryo Tazaki (University of Tokyo) – JWST observations of planet-forming disks: Dust, Ice, and PAHs

  • Jing-Ze Ma (MPA) – Rains & Quakes in 3D Massive Stars: First Light of the AREPO-Star Project

  • Brian Metzger (Columbia) -- "Failed" Gravitational Wave Sources: Luminous FBOTs from Delayed Dynamical Instability

November 27 (No talks -- Thanksgiving)