Computational Research Day is an annual all-day symposium which brings together Northwestern students, faculty, and researchers across fields and disciplines to share and promote their experiences and efforts in digital research. Through a broad range of activities, topics such as research reproducibility in computational science, data management and data science challenges, research communication, and much more are explored.
CIERA participated broadly:
- Astronomy graduate student Alex Gurvich was among three winners of the Data Visualization Challenge. He won for Best Animation with “Stellar Feedback vs. Galaxy Formation”, a high resolution animation of a simulation of stellar feedback and resulting galaxy formation with three varied results side by side. (Click the image above, left to watch the animation on YouTube.)
- Shane Larson, Associate Director of CIERA and Research Associate Professor, gave one of the two keynotes of the day, titled “At Home in a Storm of Stars: Observing, Simulating, and Pondering the Milky Way Galaxy.”
- Professor Giles Novak gave a talk, titled “Balloon-borne Observations of the Birth of Stars and Planets in Magnetized Galactic Clouds.”
- Michelle Paulsen, Director of Education, Outreach, and Communications Programs, helped lead a “Birds of a Feather” session on effectively communicating research.
- Aaron Geller, Research Assistant Professor and Senior Interactive Visualization Specialist, and Adam Miller, CIERA Postdoctoral Fellow, instructed a workshop called “Bayesian Model Fitting in Python with emcee.”
- Graduate student Kyle Kremer presented a lightning talk, titled “Globular Clusters as Laboratories for Black Hole Astrophysics.”
- Sponsored by CIERA and NICO, the poster session included the following astronomy students:
Josh Fixelle (3rd Place Award): Stellar Mass Black Hole – Star Collisions with Smoothed-Particle Hydrodynamics
Alex Gurvich: Studying Star Formation Using High-Resolution Numerical Simulations of Galaxy Formation
Michael Katz (2nd Place Award): Probing Massive Black Hole Populations and Their Environments with LISA
Kyle Kremer: Dynamical Formation of Black Hole Binaries in Globular Clusters
Shi Ye: How Black Holes Shape Globular Clusters
Northwestern Computational Research Day is hosted by Northwestern Information Technology and sponsored by Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, Kellogg School of Management, Feinberg School of Medicine, Office for Research, The Graduate School, Northwestern University Library, CIERA (Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics), and NICO (Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems). Corporate sponsors are Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), the PIER Group and Lenovo.