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AAS - 2014

The Winter American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting is the largest meeting of professional astronomers in the world. NITARP educators attend an AAS first to meet their team, then they go home and work remotely for much of the year, and then attend an AAS to present their results.  At any given AAS, then, we could have two NITARP classes attending - those finishing up, and those getting started. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

The 2013 and 2014 NITARP teams attended the 2014 January AAS meeting in National Harbor, MD (outside of Washington, DC). The 2013 class was presenting results and the 2014 class was starting up. We had a lot of alumni raise their own money to come back as well. We sent about 75 people to the AAS and had a grand time. Please see the special article on NITARP at the AAS. One of our participants, Peggy Piper, participated in a Congressional briefing on Thursday! All the posters we presented are linked from the team's pages below, except for HG-WELS and SIRXS, because they are the two new teams.

Quotes

  • [student:] The most interesting thing that I learned was that there is just so much research going on and on such small things, but it all is used as stepping stones to bigger and better things.
  • [student:] I didn't expect the days to feel so jam packed. I found it difficult to make time for meals and I still was only able to attend about half of the talks I wanted to see.
  • I am exceedingly grateful for the NITARP program. I know that without this experience I would not have been exposed to so many interesting topics and research ideas.
  • Being at AAS was overwhelming, but enormously informative. [..] the best thing about the event was simply seeing how business is done. Some questioners at talks are part of informed discourse, some are competitive, some are off the wall, and some have an axe to grind. But mostly what came through powerfully -- and really changed my image of the field -- is how intensely collaborative the work is for the most part. I had never been to a poster session at an academic conference before. When I’ve seen high school poster sessions they seemed contrived to me. Now I understand what they are trying to model.
  • [After going to an AAS town hall:] I am glad my paycheck does not derive from NSF funding.

Related Teams

AAS - 2014