Tag: Congratulations

On Friday last week (07/19), Maggie of House XWCL, first of her name, phaser of segmented apertures, protector of 1/4-20 drivers and the first piezoelectric motors, breaker of drywall barriers, the aligned, enthusiast of The Expanse and master of optical waterwheels made Tucson a little brighter that day with the successful defense of her dissertation!

Maggie’s talk took us on a journey through the world of extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) instrumentation and revealed what is coming next for the development of the MagAO-X successor, GMagAO-X, slated to be installed on the upcoming Giant Magellan telescope. If you’re like me, you were mesmerized by the complexities of GMagAO-X’s parallel deformable mirror design and learned a lot about the optomechanical specifics of MagAO-X and the HCAT testbed.

It came to the surprise of no one that Maggie emerged from the closed-door session of the defense victorious and ready to take on the post-student world like an absolute boss. To celebrate, we all convened in the Steward Observatory 3rd floor Interaction Area to sample some celebratory bubbly and treats. Thanks to Jialin, Eden, and Josh for helping me supply some Maggie-approved sweets including coffee cake, jelly empanadas, cookies, and peach melba-flavored macarons (a reference to the sci-fi show ‘The Expanse’).

If you have a spare moment and you’re in the Steward Observatory building gaze upon the new the cork-shaped hole in the ceiling at the 3rd floor Interaction Area [edit: kidding].

Maggie has accepted a job offer to work as an optomechanical engineer as part of the staff at the Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics here at Steward Observatory where she will put her talents towards the latest space-based telescope projects. Though she is moving to a different office space, we’re all super thankful she will stay close to the group both professionally and physically.

We capped the day off with a fun celebration comprised of family and friends. Congrats again, Maggie!

Song of the Day

The song of the day is Death Cab for Cutie’s “Transatlanticism” which is also the title to the album which Maggie, Eden, and I saw them play live, in its entirety, last September in D.C. completely serendipitously. This also just happened to be the first show of the nationwide tour…!

It’s a long track with a dramatic build-up, but think I speak for Eden and Maggie as well when I say that this song captures very fond memories that we share together.

It’s been quite a week for our intrepid veteran-turned-teacher-turned-professional-astrophysicist. The hardest part of the dissertation defense is usually scheduling it at a time all your committee members can attend, and this time was no different. In true Texan style, Logan lassoed her committee and roped them in to a defense in-person and online this June 11th, 2024.

Unfortunately, I was only able to watch the public portion of the defense from afar via Zoom. I also vicariously enjoyed Logan’s big day through the subsequent vignettes dropped context-free in our Slack’s #blog-ops channel.

(I think of these as a sort of wishful thinking. Posters wish a blog post into existence by posting things that might illustrate it. Well, who am I to deny them?)

Logan began with a title slide crammed full of the stuff she’s been working on these past five years:

She gave an overview of MagAO-X, for which she published the first ever peer-reviewed science paper using the instrument:

Gave the people what they crave (i.e. astronomical discoveries):

And let us know where we can find her in the near future:

Because we’ve never been sticklers about anything*, the party to celebrate Logan’s defense took place before the successful conclusion of the defense. Frankly, I’m gutted to have missed it. Fortunately, former-pastry-chef-future-Dr. Jay Kueny made Logan’s favorite pineapple buns in my stead. (No doubt with Melanie’s help!)

*Except label maker use, circus activities, and other important lab rules.

I’m told a pastry chef can make a pretty darn good pineapple bun (on the first try, too!)

Meanwhile, back in linear time, Logan was locked in a room(/Zoom) with four dangerous scientists and had to escape with only her wits. The labmates / COVID bubble-mates group chat—now scattered between California, New Mexico, Tucson, and New York—waited anxiously for word that Logan had surmounted her final academic trial.

Did she beat school?

Dear readers, of course she did.

The group chat accordingly recognized the ascension:

A full program of celebrations was called for, beginning with further chef magic from Jay.

The Cardboard Crowning of newly-minted Ph.D.s is a tradition as old as the academy itself. (Don’t quote me on that.) So, naturally, Logan was not about to get away without a hat pointing out what giant nerd just got all doctorfied.

Some more glamour shots of the extremely regal crown Eden made:

Celebrations for Logan continued that evening with beers at the site of her triumphs, with a special guest appearance by the Director of Steward Observatory and head of the Department of Astronomy at University of Arizona: Dr. Buell Jannuzzi.

What’s that he’s looking at? Well, there might be a blog post about that soon. Sure looks like there’s a dang viscacha in that instrument.

Song of the Day

Today’s song of the day is brought to you by the temperature delta between June in Tucson (high: 109ºF) and Michigan (high: 84ºF).

Bonus Hedgehog

I modeled this hedgehog in a Ph.D. tam for Logan with the intent of getting it 3D printed. Turns out 3D metal printing is, like, expensive. But it was too good to keep to myself.

XWCL has a lot to be proud of this graduation season. Our best and brightest donned their funny hats and walked across their stages. What? You haven’t seen their defense blogs yet? Shhhh. The actual degree part, they’ll get there. Today is for celebrating!

First up was the Optical Science graduation.

Next up was the ceremonies at the Steward Observatory:

We wish them the best of luck in their future work!

Congrats on the Academic pageantry, and we can’t wait to see you all defend!

Song of the Day

Cheers to mastery, mate!

On Thursday last week, Warren Byrum Foster of house XWCL, first of his name, Tzar of tubeless designs and the first picomotors, protector of PIAA lenses, cultivar of pineapple, breaker of linear shift-invariance, the unphased, and (most recently) Master of Science defended his thesis and restored peace and order to the 8th floor of the Optical Sciences building.

The public portion of the presentation detailed the many intricacies of the Phase-Induced Amplitude Apodization (PIAA) component of MagAO-X and I’m pretty sure I speak for more than just myself when I say that I learned a lot about the importance of this project for pushing the limits of the Magellan Clay telescope. Warren also had the foresight and kindness to distract us with tasty Mexican pastries and fizzy drinks while we awaited the good news during the “grilling” portion of the defense. We would all like to thank him for his work towards shrinking our inner working angle and furthering our long term science goals of becoming the best AO system in the world!

No windows were left with a cork-shaped hole, this clearly isn’t his first time…

Congratulations to Warren! Starting your grad school journey at the apex of the pandemic (Aug. 2020) and completing many of your core classes remotely and mostly solo was no easy feat (source: same cohort as me!) so extra kudos to you for sticking it out and finishing with a bang. We’ll definitely miss you and the positive vibes you bring; whether we’re on observing runs or just experiencing daily life on the UArizona campus. Here’s to the road ahead; may your hunts be fruitful and your arrows fly swift.

For now, Warren is continuing with the refinement of the PIAA setup with some fancy picomotors for finer control during operation. Further into summer, he is pursuing collaboration with the Roger Angel group to demonstrate his talents on the LFAST project.

A nice sunny day in the Summer of 1998 2023 provides the perfect backdrop for celebrating a successful Master’s defense on the 8th floor in Meinel.

For proper celebration shenanigans we found ourselves at 1912 Brewing Co. where we presented Warren with a super cool tee which he promptly and eagerly put on. (Thanks to Joseph for facilitating this!)

Song of the Day

The song of the day is an absolute classic and a known favorite of Warren. I chose this rendition because Ray Chen’s facial expressions while playing the violin more than make up for the lack of vocals here…!