What I learn from Astrostatistics Summer School at Penn State

During my first summer as a graduate student at MIT, I got an opportunity to participate in the 12th Astrostatistics Summer School at Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), organized by Eric Feigelson in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. My first impression about the summer school is mostly about some fancy statistical techniques that astronomers are adopting in their research to do data analysis. But the reality is much more than I can ever imagine.

Learn Bayesian Statistics from Thomas Loredo

The Second Part of AAS 227th Meeting in Florida: Poster!

While the first post for AAS meeting is about my experience at the conference in general, the second post will be dedicated mostly on my first experience in a poster presentation.

During mid-October, my advisor and I decided that I should give a poster presentation on my current research project at AAS as a good way to introduce my project to the community in order to gather feedbacks about it. I spent around two weeks in December working with the poster from creating a template for the poster, generating the information, figures and diagram, and finalizing the poster. It was a rewarding experience as you got to see the physical poster at the end. We decided to use a fabric poster for easy packing and traveling which made an awesome poster.

My first poster for the AAS Meeting

AAS 227th Meetng in Orlando, Florida

I would say that I am fairly lucky to have a chance to join this year AAS meeting because not many first-year graduate students usually come to the meeting. My main goals for this meeting are attending my first "Astropy" workshop and presenting the progress of my current research project about finding galaxy clusters. The size and the scale of this meeting are completely different from my first scientific meeting I attended last year in Vietnam. There are more than ten sessions running at the same time covered not only all kinds of research topics in astrophysics from exoplanet to cosmology, but also public outreach and other astrophysics-related topics such as coding and writing papers. The conference could easily feel overwhelming as many events occur simultaneously. I can only write about the conference from my own perspective, and keep in mind that each one of us will have a totally different experience.

AAS 227th Meeting at Kissimmee, Florida

Vacation in Orlando: Theme Parks

Visiting theme parks in Orlando is one of the top tourist activities in the US. I didn't get to do it until my 6th year in the US. It was much more fun that I expected even though I was already 24 at that time.

The trip started with me finished my first astronomical conference in a nearby town. In fact, the only reason that I spend 5 days in Orlando is because I was already here for the conference.

The first day is not super exciting as I was waiting for my friend to join from New York City. I simply walked around the hotel and had Popeye for the first time in a place nearby. I also had a chance to plan all of our days in Orlando, which mostly consist of visiting different theme parks each day.

We started our theme park vacation with Aquatica. It was an enormous water park, except it was pretty empty when we were there (probably because it was January 😅). "Ihu’s Breakaway Fall" is one of the most scariest ride I did for the whole trip with four different theme parks. The ride is that the floor will suddenly disappear and you fell immediately down the slide very fast with angle of more than 80 degree. What I realized was that a fun part about visiting a theme park is seeing people walking around the park, but we didn't get to do that at this park. But, it was still a great experience and I really like a water park. At night, we also visit the Disney town near the Disney World. There were so many shops in the town.

Empty water park with an empty ride. It is good that you don't have to wait in line for any rides.

Story about Pixar

In the past two weeks, I had experience several things related to Pixar from a book written by the president of Pixar, a new Pixar film, a documentary about Pixar and the exhibition titled "Science behind Pixar". Thus, I would like this chance to write about what I have learned from this period of learning about Pixar and share my obsession about the company.

Me with Buzz Lightyear at The Science Behing Pixar Exhbition in Museum of Science

A Book written by the president of Pixar

I started this journey when I decided to pick up a book called "Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration" by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace as one of Mark Zuckerberg's recommended books. Ed Catmull is the co-founder and current president of Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Animation Studios. Even though the premise of the book is not solely on the history of Pixar, but instead the management of creative enterprise, it still manages to tell different accounts related to Pixar as an example. Being a co-founder of Pixar, Ed had a first-hand experience with all the ups and downs in Pixar ranging from founding the company with the help from Steve Job, achieving an incredible success after its first movie "Toy Story", to facing different struggles as the company expanded and merged with Disney in 2006.

Quick Trip to New York City for New Year Celebration

I would say that I started this trip with so little planning and not many things I wanted to do for the trip. Maybe the only reason that I decide to go to New York City for a couple days is simply an opportunity for me to see my old friends from various groups that I would not see in Cambridge and Boston.

This trip had so little planning that I only got a round-trip bus ticket three days beforehand. I would say the shortest amount of time that I prepared for any trips. I had some idea that I would want to go to New York City for winter break, but I did not know when exactly until there was no time left to me to decide. So I just bought the tickets.

There are two things that I liked about this quick four-day-and-three-night trip to New York City.

What I wanted to do: see old faces in a different city. 
I started this trip, not with finding a place to stay, but with a quick meet up with my Thai friend from Northwestern (Mind). I didn't expect to see him there until I realized that he was in New York City and actually flying back to Chicago on the night that I arrived. So, I purposefully booked the earliest bus ride to New York City in order to see him before his flight. It was nice to get to meet with people from Chicago, where I spent my last four years. I also met his friend who is currently studying law at NYU.

P'Mind at Grace Street in New York City