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 – No Talks

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 – No Talks

February 27 – No Talks

March 06

  • Savannah Cary (Berkeley) – Spinning Down Neutron Stars to Hour-Long Periods
  • Hao-Tse Howard Huang (Berkeley) – Binary System Evolution at the Galactic Center
  • Peter Senchyna (Carnegie Observatories) –

March 13

  • Katie Sharpe (Berkeley) – Probing Isolated Dwarf Galaxy Evolution using JWST Spectroscopic Stellar ɑ-Abundances
  • Massimo Pascale (Berkeley) – Is Earendel of the Sunrise Arc a z~6 Globular Cluster Progenitor?
  • Richard Teague (MIT) – Leveraging Neural Fields to Model Protoplanetary Disks

March 20

  • Alice Booth (Harvard CfA) – The Chemistry of Giant Planet Formation
  • Cooper Jacobus (Berkeley) – Complexity and the Cosmos
  • Wen-Fai Fong (Northwestern) – Considerations for Neutron Star Mergers to Enrich their Environments with r-process

March 27 – No Meeting (Spring Break!)

April 03

  • Natalie LeBaron (Berkeley) – AT 2024wpp in UV to NIR: the unprecedented evolution of a luminous fast blue optical transient

  • Peter Ma (Berkeley) – Neural Active Optics System for the Rubin Observatory
  • Maude Gull (Berkeley) – Metal-poor Massive Contact Binary Candidates in the Local Group

April 10

  • Yuhan Yao (Berkeley) – Off-nuclear Tidal Disruption Events as Probes of Wandering Black Holes
  • Olivia Aspegren (Berkeley) – The Featureless Spectra of Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients
  • Harry Teplitz (Caltech) – PASSAGE: A slitless spectroscopy view of galaxy evolution with JWST

April 17

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

April 24 – PhD Exit Talks!

  • Sergiy Vasylyev (Berkeley)
  • Nick Choksi (Berkeley)

May 01 – PhD Exit Talks!

  • Maude Gull (Berkeley)
  • Emma Turtelboom (Berkeley)