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

Asian Science Camp 2015 at Bangkok, Thailand

If I can pick one highlight for each summer, it would not be too difficult for the previous three summers. My highlight for my first summer is easily Yellowstone with my Thai friends from University of Chicago. For my second summer, it would be a conference about technology at KAIST, South Korea. Last summer, it was definitely UTRIP, an internship program at University of Tokyo, Japan. However, it was not so easy this summer. Previously I would say either an exoplanet conference in Quy Nhon, Vietnam or my sightseeing trip to Ho Chi Minh City. But after going to Asian Science Camp (ASC2015), I am certain that the best thing that happened to me this summer is being a liaison at ASC2015.

Panel Discussion with famous scientists, including two Nobel winners and Field Medalist (Credit: Theerapoom Boonprab)

Planetary Conference in Quy Nhon, Vietnam and What I learned from here

During the summer, I had a chance to participate in a planetary conference in Quy Nhon, Vietnam as it is my first conference participating as a speaker to talk about my research works. Previously, I had been to few different conferences, including ICIST at KAIST as a delegated speaker, APRIM in Chiang Mai as a liaison to help organize the conference, and an upcoming Asian Science Camp (ASC) as a liaison for leaders. Being the first time, there are so many things that I have no idea about, such as cloth for the conference (it seems like I am way overdressed for this summer conference - I guess it is better to be overdressed than underdressed). Of course, I also mange to find some time to travel in Ho Chi Minh before going to the conference. 

The conference is at a private conference hall next to the beach and far from everything else. The location is awesome as it is in the middle of nowhere and everyone at the conference is forced o to meet each other more than other conferences. The building is created only to support scientific conferences. This creates some problems regarding having enough conference and events to be self-sustained without other supports. Either more business conferences or having private investors are necessary for sustaining the building.  

ICISE, the venue for the planetary conference

The Script for the talk at ICISTS-KAIST 2013

Giving a presentation about computer science education in South Korea, 2013

     I would like to share my script for the talk that I gave at ICISTS-KAIST on this blog, so that others can have a chance to read and understand some tiny point that I want to get across our current situation on computer science education. You can also listen to me talking for 13 minutes on Youtube. Also, I also wrote more details about the conference as a whole in the other page that I encourage you to see if you are interested in the conference.

Here is the script:

ICIST-KAIST 2013

Presented on the two days project about new technology

There is a progression for my blog from just a way to post some photos to a tourist's journal that keeps track of all the places that I visit, but now it became a place for me to write down some experience that I think worth sharing to others.

This time, I attended a conference in South Korea, called ICISTS-KAIST which mainly focuses on the integration between technology and society. The conference itself is wonderful and I was really impressed that all of these were created by only undergraduate students from KAIST, one of the top university in South Korea. Many famous people attended this conference including Walter Bander (a founder of One Laptop per Child project) and David Christian (Big History on Ted Talk).