Website contact: ybchen (at) umich.edu. This website is created with Bootstrap.
Studies of gravitationally-bound star clusters and their unbound counterparts (stellar streams) have come to the forefront of astrophysics research with the advent of recent space-based observatories Gaia and JWST and ground-based ALMA. Star clusters link small scales of individual star formation with large scales of galaxy formation and allow deeper understanding of both. Astronomers and physicists in the Great Lakes region have expertise in theoretical and observational studies of cluster formation in molecular clouds, their feedback on the interstellar medium, high-energy phenomena associated with binary stars in dense clusters, scaling relations between properties of old star clusters and their host galaxies, and the reconstruction of the mass profile and assembly history of our Milky Way galaxy using streams of stars from disrupted clusters. The time is ripe for a comprehensive interaction between these research groups.
This conference will bring together a diverse group of astronomers, physicists, and data scientists investigating stellar clusters and streams in many institutions bordering the Great Lakes in USA and Canada. A focused conference with lots of discussion time will allow us to identify physical connections across spatial scale and galactic environment. In addition to traditional analysis, machine learning techniques have already allowed significant progress in finding unexpected connections and they will only become important in the future. A frank exchange of ideas and techniques may lead to fresh, perhaps interdisciplinary projects. One of the main goals of the workshop is to foster new collaborations. We will allocate ample time for panel discussions and extended lunch break for small group interaction.
The conference is supported by the Michigan Institute for Research in Astrophysics and by the Michigan Institute for Data Science.
All talks are 15 minutes + 5 minutes for questions. All talks are scheduled only in the morning sessions. In preparation of the presentations, we ask all speakers to identify topics for potential collaboration with other participants and questions where they would like help from others. Promoting new collaborations is one of the goals of this workshop.
Afternoon sessions will begin with a summary of the morning talks, followed by an open floor discussion where we encourage participants to follow up (support or debate) on the morning presentations. This will be an opportunity for lightning talks (up to 5 minutes) to show one supporting slide. The goal of these sessions is to promote deeper discussions than in the standard question/answer format.
Late afternoon sessions will feature one or two practical workshops on the applications of analysis techniques. They will be conducted in python notebooks available in advance, where all interested participants could follow and code in real time. These workshops will be concluded with another opportunity for lighting talks on the technique and more coding practice.
To help participants, we collect presentation slides from presenters who are willing share. The files follow the naming convention of [First Name]_[Last Name].
Website contact: ybchen (at) umich.edu. This website is created with Bootstrap.