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218 AAS Meeting

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Posted by bkloppenborg on May 27, 2011 - 2:34pm

The 218 AAS meeting in Boston, MA was great.  I met up with people I know and several people whom I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time.  
 
There were many talks about the recent results from Kepler ranging from new instrumentation/reduction pipeline issues to new scientific discoveries (planets and astroseismology mostly).  One particularly interesting talk, at least from my perspectives, presented some demographic information on jobs in astronomy/astrophysics.  The speaker (James S. Ulvestad of the NSF, who made it very clear that he was NOT speaking on behalf of the NSF, but instead as an individual), presented some staggering statistics.  Once the talk is online I highly suggest you watch it if you are planning a career in astronomy/astrophysics research.
 
I was scribbling down things very quickly so what I summarize below might contain incorrect statements.  The more staggering ones though I am sure are correct.  If you find an error let me know and I'll fix it.
 
  • Each professional astronomer has about 30,000 people from the public to which they need to explain the importance of astronomy (found via. dividing the US population by AAS membership).  Because of this working with local astronomy clubs or groups like the AAVSO to show the importance of astronomy research is encouraged.
  • In 30 years 7,500 graduate students will earn a Ph.D., whereas only 1,700 faculty jobs will be available (assuming the number of faculty positions doesn't change, each professor works for 30 years, and the current graduation rate of 250 students/yr earn a Ph.D.).  Foreigners are not included in this statistic as they appear to come to the US and leave at about the same rate.
  • Less than 25% of graduating astronomy Ph.D.s get astronomy faculty positions (yikes!).
  • The distribution of astro jobs is about 54% academic, 21% university research positions, 7% at the NRAO, 7% Federal government, 5% non-profit, 4% private industry, and 2% military
  • Women continue to be underrepresented in faculty jobs by a factor of 3.  Minorities are even worse, being underrepresented by 5-10 times even though they make up a significant fraction of the US population.  Evidently a family friendly policy at Berkley increased the number of women in faculty jobs quite considerably (by a factor of 3x).
 
His advice to students and mentors is basically to train yourself/ your students in as many things as possible.  In particular, policy, teaching, data handling, instrumentation, and program/project management.  Also, if you are a mentor to students, show them that non-academic jobs (which require a professional degree or masters) are important and can be quite lucrative.
 
And his advice to institutions is that if NSF values the "broader impacts" of research, the institution should too.

Now to the lighter side of things.  I've placed my posters online if you want to look at them, as well as my talk (if any of the links are broken, try accessing them from my portfolio page https://portfolio.du.edu/pc/port?portfolio=bkloppen):

Towards a Full Orbital Solution for Epsilon Aurigae (2011 AAS Boston)

Collaborative Research Efforts for Citizen Scientists (2011 AAS Boston)

And from the previous (AAS 217 in Seattle, WA) meeting:

Interferometric Images Of The Transiting Disk In The Epsilon Aurigae System (2011 AAS Seattle)

2011 AAS: Development of DSLR Photometry as an Example of a Citizen Sky Team

I hope that John Martin and Dr. Bob will also post their posters/talks online so you can see them too.




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It was a pleasure to spend
By drspiff on May 28, 2011 - 11:20am

It was a pleasure to spend some time talking to Brian, Dr Bob, and everyone else that showed up for the meeting I posted a link to my poster over in the spectroscopy forum. http://www.citizensky.org/forum/aasaavso-meeting-boston A direct link to my poster is here: https://edocs.uis.edu/jmart5/www/barber/JCMPoster.203.04.small.pdf

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