Chelen Johnson
SIRXS (SEIP IR Excess Survey) : looking for IR excesses around stars found within the Spitzer Enhanced Imaging Products (SEIP) source list.
I think that astronomy is much more accessible to everyone than any other science. I had no idea all of the data for the research I'll be doing with my team is online!
The "new" astronomy has become something we all knew was coming: handling huge chunks of data and learning how to mine this information from sets so large that it is simply mind boggling. The interesting thing is that many people are not aware of this, notably teachers in the trenches.
[at the 2013 AAS,] I was always struck by the focus on ensuring the data is real and using modeling to create templates when classifying objects or processes.