Colloquium Calendar

Title: Beyond Academia, Still Physics: Medical Physics and My Path into the Profession

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Physics as a profession is not just limited to academia or a laboratory setting. One profession of note is medical physics, where the physicist works alongside physicians and other healthcare workers to develop, implement and oversee the use of technologies for the diagnosis and treatment of disease. To ensure the safe and effective use of these technologies, medical physicists must take on roles spanning numerous fields including physics, engineering, metrology, medicine, safety, computer science, research, education, and management. This presentation will provide a general introduction to the field of medical physics by highlighting the roles a medical physicist performs. While not intended to be exhaustive, this introduction will detail the knowledge and its application necessary to perform the duties of a medical physicist. The presentation will conclude with my experience entering the profession, additionally providing an overview of the educational, clinical, and certification pathways required to become a medical physicist.

Title: The Renaissance of Stellar Intensity Interferometry and Recent Advances with VERITAS

Abstract: 

Seventy years ago, Robert Hanbury Brown devised an ingenious technique to measure stellar sizes.  Quite distinct from the more common Michelson (or amplitude) interferometry, stellar intensity interferometry (SII) is insensitive to atmospheric turbulence that renders Michelson interferometry impossible at visual wavelengths. I will give a brief introduction of the history of SII and the controversy it generated over the nature of quantum mechanics. I will discuss the recent renaissance of SII with modern electronics and large Cherenkov telescope arrays. I will then introduce the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) SII system and novel results in imaging the shape of the photosphere of the rapid rotator gamma Cassiopeia and the complete geometry of the binary star alpha Virginis. I will discuss the implementations for understanding fundamental stellar properties and give an outlook for this new area of astronomy.

Title: Cosmic Shear Systematics in the LSST Era

Abstract: 

In the next decade, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will collect data for billions of galaxies across the sky, mapping the underlying web-like structure of the universe evolving over cosmic time. In this new data-rich era, cosmological inference will no longer be limited by statistical uncertainty; instead, significant sources of biases are expected to arise from incomplete and/or incorrect characterization of the systematics induced by astrophysical processes, methodologies, and technological realities. I will introduce the main observational probes for large-scale structure cosmology with LSST with a focus on weak gravitational lensing (or cosmic shear) and recent work on diagnosing systematic effects. I will also briefly discuss new work on using synthetic source injection techniques for characterizing cross-redshift effects for improved cosmic shear analysis.

Title: Diving deep into galaxy winds and their engines

Abstract: 

Some galaxies host powerful multi-phase outflows of material that regulate galaxy growth and pollute the circumgalactic gas with heavy elements and dust. These outflows are powered by nuclear activity, either due to star formation, supermassive black hole accretion, or a combination of both depending on the source, and they are thought to play a key role in shaping galaxies during their formative epoch. Their underlying physics, however, are not settled.  I will discuss observations of the cooler phases of the winds in three nearby galaxies, primarily from ALMA and JWST. I will then shift to look at the starburst at the base of the wind in these objects, presenting observations of the massive young stellar clusters that are the engine of the star formation activity and the wind and discussing the feedback mechanisms behind super star cluster formation.

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