Chelen Johnson
The Luminosity, Accretion Disk, and Dust Team (LADDT) : combining UV, optical, and near infrared data for active galactic nuclei to look for a relation between the color of their accretion disks, the emission from their dust and their luminosity.
Everything [at the 2013 AAS] was new. The interesting piece was attending a press briefing and then comparing that to the scientist version.
For me, [this project] was a real partnership between scientists and educators. All questions and suggestion were taken seriously and with respect.
One of my students at Niles West had become interested in GRBs as we thought they were the results of mergers of black holes [but we learned this was wrong at an AAS plenary talk]. My student thought it was interesting that scientists could change their minds about how things worked.
