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). **Note that from Jan 29 to Feb 26, the talks will be held at 3:30-4:30PM (Berkeley time).**
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.

Spring 2026 Schedule


January 22

  • Gongjie Li (Georgia Tech) -- Unified Formation Channel of Hot and Warm Jupiters via Planet-Planet Scattering
  • DEIC Committee Presentations

January 29 [3:30 PM]

  • Canceled

February 5 [3:30 PM]

  • Assaf Horesh (HUJI) – The radio awakens - a new phenomenon in TDEs

February 12 [3:30 PM]

  • Canceled

February 19 [3:30 PM]

  • Mohammad Farhat (Berkeley) – Death and Dearth of Circumbinary Planets

  • Paul Kalas (Berkeley) – Fomalhaut strikes back: Giant impacts light up an extrasolar planetary system

February 26 [3:30 PM]

  • TBD

March 5

  • Gregoire Aufort (Berkeley) –

  • Yixian Chen (Princeton) –  

  • Zosia Krusberg (Chicago) – Colloquium Speaker

March 12

  • Ziwei Ding (Purdue) – 3D Reconstruction of the Crab Nebula
  • Sunny Rhoades (UC Davis) – Spatially-Resolved Kinematics of Lensed Galaxies at Cosmic Noon
  • Stephen Taylor (Vanderbilt) – Colloquium Speaker

March 19

  • Natalie Green (Berkeley) – Protoplanetary disk chemistry as seen by the ALMA DECO Large Program
  • Courtney Dressing (Berkeley) – Taking a Census of Nearby Planetary Systems

  • Stella Offner (Texas) – Colloquium Speaker

March 26

  • [No talks -- spring break]

April 2

  • Tamojeet Roychowdhury (Berkeley) –
  • Jessica Lu (Berkeley) –

  • Xiaohui Fan (Arizona) – Colloquium Speaker

April 9

  • Yifei Luo (LBNL) –
  • Christian Hellum Bye (Berkeley) – 21-cm Cosmology with EIGSEP

  • Liam Connor (Harvard) – Colloquium Speaker

April 16

  • Natasha Abrams (Berkeley) –
  • Wenbin Lu (Berkeley) –
  • Clément Bonnerot (Birmingham) –

April 23

  • Samuel Whitebook (Caltech) –
  • Raffaella Margutti (Berkeley) –

  • Grace Telford (Utah) – Colloquium Speaker

April 30

  • Itai Sfaradi (Berkeley) – What drives the radio and X-ray re-brightening of a decade old relativistic SN?
  • Savannah Cary (Berkeley) –

  • Mathieu Renzo (Arizona) – Colloquium Speaker

May 7

  • Exit talks