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” (12:40–1:30)
Location: 131 Campbell Hall (rooms A & B)
Organizers: Luke Kelley

To volunteer for a talk, please e-mail Luke (LZKelley@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 Luke to facilitate scheduling their talk.

Speakers are recommended to bring their own laptop, cable adapter (although we have some), and pointer.  Presentations may also use the whiteboard.  Please contact Luke ahead of time for any special accommodations.

Spring 2025 Schedule

January 30

  • DEIC/Outreach rapid talks!

February 06

  • speaker (institute) – title

February 13

  • Natasha Abrams (Berkeley) – Assessing the Impact of Binary Systems on Microlensing Using SPISEA and PopSyCLE Population Simulations
  • Massimo Pascale (Berkeley) – The First Measurement of H0 From a Multiply-Imaged SN Ia
  • Jianhe Zheng (Berkeley) – Origin of Fast X-ray Transient EP240414a: an off-axis jet-cocoon system

February 20

  • speaker (institute) – title

February 27

  • Emiko Gardiner (Berkeley) – Characterizing Continuous Gravitational Waves from Supermassive Black Hole Binaries
  • speaker (institute) – title
  • speaker (institute) – title

March 06

  • Natalie LeBaron (Berkeley) –
  • Hao-Tse Howard Huang (Berkeley) –
  • Peter Senchyna (Carnegie Observatories) –

March 13

  • Katie Sharpe (Berkeley) –
  • Savannah Cary (Berkeley) –
  • Richard Teague (MIT) –

March 20

  • Alice Booth (Harvard CfA) –
  • Cooper Jacobus (Berkeley) – Testing Dark Energy at the Largest Possible Scales
  • Wen-Fai Fong (Northwestern) –

March 27 – No Meeting (Spring Break!)

April 03

  • Liang Dai (Berkeley) –
  • Peter Ma (Berkeley) –
  • Jason Rhodes (NASA JPL) –

April 10

  • Yuhan Yao (Berkeley) – Off-nuclear Tidal Disruption Events as Probes of Wandering Black Holes
  • Olivia Aspegren (Berkeley) –
  • Rebecca Oppenheimer (AMNH) –

April 17

  • Raffaella Margutti (Berkeley) –
  • Ken Shen (Berkeley) –
  • Jan Eldridge (U. Auckland) –

April 24 – PhD Exit Talks!

  • speaker (institute) – title

May 01 – PhD Exit Talks!

  • speaker (institute) – title