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My academic big sister

Here's a video from last year's NSF, TMT & Discover panel, on the topic of "Mysteries of the Universe."



Mike Brown is one of my colleagues at Caltech, and his daughter is in Owen's class (the Beavers) at the Caltech Children's Center. The moderator Phil Plait is the author of a great blog called Bad Astronomy. I'm really looking forward to meeting him in person.

The woman with the awesome red socks is Debra Fischer, my friend, close collaborator and newly minted full professor of astrophysics at Yale (previously a prof. at San Francisco State). Debra and I are both former students of Geoff Marcy, so I consider her my academic big sister. She taught me how to use a telescope, plan an observing run, give a good science talk, and, most importantly, how to be a good scientist. I owe a great deal of my success to the lessons I learned from Debra late at night at Lick Observatory using the CAT to search for planets.

As if being a Yale professor isn't enough, she's also currently a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and was recently on the subject of the cover story in their magazine. You can read more about my big sis' and her search for planets around the Sun's closest neighbors here:

Comments

mama mia said…
So I am hoping your presence on this year's panel will be on video too? And you will send us all a link so we can watch it from afar? Can't wait to hear you discuss exoplanets.
JohnJohn said…
Yup, it'll be a webcast. There will also be a feature article in Discover Magazine soon after the event.

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