"When I Grow Up" -- Making Toast and Breaking Ice

Professional Development is an important aspect of the AAAS Fellowship program. We are scientists who are trying to expand our skill sets and improve ourselves! Therefore, one of the things I *really* wanted to work on as a Fellow is my communication skills. For this reason, I have joined the NSF Chapter of "ToastMasters International" -- a group which meets every week to work on our public speaking. Every week, there are opportunities to give a prepared speech, or to stand up and give a 1-2 minute off-the-cuff speech on various topics to work on speaking on the fly. I've done a number of those short speeches, but last week I gave my very first prepared speech, my "Ice Breaker". 

When you join Toastmasters, you get a booklet with a number of different types of speeches that you can work through. The first one is just to get used to speaking in front of an audience, so you talk about the subject you know the most about -- yourself. It can be on pretty much anything related to you, and is supposed to last 4-6 minutes (keeping your speech within the allotted time is one of the goals). I took one of the suggested prompts, "how did you get to your current position", and wrote a practice script to help me prepare. While I did NOT memorize this speech verbatim, I had the outline of it in front of me, and had memorized some of the lines so that I could fall back on those words if I started blanking. I was pretty happy with my talk at the end of it, and I received some very nice comments from my speech evaluate (as well as advice -- I apparently overuse the word "so" when I speak, for example).  This is not the exact speech I gave, but I thought I would share it with all of you, and give you an idea of how I got to where I am now!

SCOTUS and Me: High Times at the Highest Court

I am not a morning person. However, this past Monday found me waking up at 4:00am, getting on the FIRST Metro train that ran at 5am, and going into Washington DC before the sun had even risen. Why would I do this to myself, you ask? To see the highest court in the land!

Ready to see the Law in action!

The Supreme Court is currently in session, from October through June or July. And oral arguments are open to the public. Seats to any oral argument are available to members of the public on a first come, first served basis. You literally only need to show up and not bring in any prohibited items or wear inappropriate attire (and not be noisy or make a disturbance, or you will be quickly escorted out). You can find the schedule of the court on their website, here, or alternatively via SCOTUSblog, which also has some very handy case write-ups.
  
I have two big pieces of advice for those interested in attending a Supreme Court argument:

1.  Go early. No, earlier than that. EARLY.
2. Do your homework. Understand the case before you enter the courtroom.

There are usually at least 50 spots reserved for members of the general public, although the courtroom can seat about 250 visitors. But those 250 seats include any officials, dignitaries, lawyers, or groups of students who have advanced seating. People also literally hire 'sitters' to wait for them in the public line. So depending on how popular the case is, those seats can fill up FAST.

We (Benson and I) deliberately chose a day where the case looked like it wouldn't attract a lot of attention: a relatively unpublicized bankruptcy law appeal. Nothing super controversial or that would turn up in the news. Our logic was that ANY case that made it up to the Supreme Court was bound to be interesting, if only for the process, and to see the courtroom and the justices. We showed up at 5:45am. We almost didn't get in.

We got to the court at 5:45am and were #69 and #70 in line. Ahead of us, a long line of people were already sitting on the curb with blankets and backpacks. We joined them, sipping on the coffee we'd brought with us, Benson reading a physics paper on his tablet, me practicing my Cantonese on my phone. We chatted a little with the people around us, but we were mostly just trying to stay awake. There were several large groups ahead of us who had clearly come together -- some of them seemed like law students. Once it was late enough that a Starbucks would be open, a small group went and fetched several large containers of coffee, returning to the cheers of their friends.

A bit after 8am, the line finally moved: police officers came by and started counting who was there. We moved off of the curb and onto and up in front of the steps of the courthouse themselves. The first group of about 50 people were handed blue tickets and got moved in front of the door to the left of the stairs -- they were soon let into the building itself, where (I hear tell) there is a cafeteria, bathrooms, and most importantly, guaranteed seating. The rest of us stood in a line in the middle of the plaza, waiting and hoping there would be more slots. I used some of this time to take over the Supreme Court Gym in Pokémon Go to distract myself from the cold. I ended up holding control over the highest court in the land for 19 hours. This amused me to no end (though that could have been, in part, the sleep deprivation).

Around 9:20, they let about a dozen more in, handing out a few more precious blue tickets. At 9:45 we were still outside, shivering in the cold.  I was fully convinced that -- since the argument started at 10am and we still had to go through security -- there was NO WAY that we were getting in, and we'd have to settle for the 3 minute quick in-and-out for those who didn't get in for the full session. But then! An officer approached, with more blue tickets and the final count, and gave out the critical 7 tickets required for Benson and I to make it in, as well as maybe 10-15 more for people behind us. I was not paying too close attention to that particular number, I was too excited to be getting in! We zipped through security (X-ray machines for you and your stuff) and headed upstairs. There, there is ANOTHER round of security gates and X-rays: you are REQUIRED to check your coats, bags, phones, and devices in the coatroom (a quarter per locker). You are allowed to bring in are paper and writing implements, but you can't bring in your phone or anything that could create a disturbance. We dumped everything in a locker except our wallets and went in; by now, it was a bit after 10am: the Justices were in the front of the court, and they were swearing people in.

 This brings me to my second piece of advice: DO YOUR HOMEWORK.

I found the court case and the argument quite engaging, but this would NOT have been true if I had walked in blindly. The night before, we very carefully went through several summaries of the case, from SCOTUSblog, Ballotopedia, and the Legal Information Institute, amongst other sources. We spent at least an hour going through it. Whenever we came to a term we weren't sure about, we looked it up and talked it over between the two of us until we were clear on the terms. We made sure we knew who the groups of people were who were involved. We looked up summaries of the different types of bankruptcy and the specific codes that the case referred to. We formed our own opinion of what we thought might be the 'common sense' ruling as far, as far as we could tell.

With this preparation, the case itself was REALLY INTERESTING! We could follow the lawyers arguments, understand the questions that the Justices asked (and every single Justice save Clarence Thomas asked at least one question during the session), and understand the answers given (mostly); even when it involved specific references to bankruptcy code.

 I was seated behind a big marble pillar, so I couldn't see the whole court at once, but if I leaned to the left or right I could see pretty much all of the justices, though they were sometimes blocked from view by the lawyer or by heads of people in front of me. From left to right, it was Justices Kagan, Alito, Ginsburg, Kennedy, Roberts, Thomas, Breyer, Sotomayor, Gorsuch. (Alternating left/right from the center by seniority, with the Chief Justice in the middle). It was REALLY COOL to see them in action! Which brings me to....

Merit Management Group, LP v. FTI Consulting, Inc.

Background: If a company or person goes bankrupt, their stuff ends up being divvied out to their creditors by some Trustee of the bankrupt estate, who is in charge of dividing up the remaining assets to pay off as much of the debt as fairly and completely as possible. The Trustee also has some powers to undo recent transactions that the debtor may have made before going bankrupt -- so if you send 30 million dollars worth of stock to your cousin right before going bankrupt, the Trustee can undo that transaction and get your assets back to give to creditors.

BUT! You don't want to do things that will seriously damage the commodities or securities markets -- undoing a multi-million dollar deal that happened a few months ago could have huge consequences, and you want those very important markets protected, because THE ECONOMY. So certain types of transactions are protected, and cannot be undone. These transactions usually involve banks, or stock brokers -- financial institutions which are carefully defined by the bankruptcy code -- safe harbors. THIS case deals with a situation which tests the limit of these safe harbors.

The Facts Were These: Valley View Downs -- a Pennsylvania racetrack owner -- bought another racetrack, Bedford Downs. They borrowed (and then repaid) money from one bank (Credit Suisse) to do this, and the money and the Bedford Downs racetrack stock were held in escrow by another bank (Citizen's Bank) for some time during this transaction. Valley View Downs later declared bankruptcy. Can the Trustees of the bankrupt estate (FTI Consulting) undo this transaction? Or can the stockholders of the Bedford Downs racetrack (including the Merit Management Group) -- keep the funds because this transaction was protected?

Credit Suisse and Citizen's Bank ARE -- and no one is arguing this -- safe harbor institutions. But they were only conduits for the money: neither of the two banks would face any losses if the transaction was unwound. Merit Management Group says that transactions can't be ungrouped: if the transaction had ended at either Credit Suisse or Citizen's Bank they would have definitely been protected by the bankruptcy code -- so if the individual transactions would be protected, so should the whole. FTI Consulting says that even if the money and stocks went THROUGH these safe harbor institutions, that doesn't mean that the transaction itself is protected: ultimately the money and stock were traded between Valley View Downs and Merit Management, just moving through the two banks temporarily as the trade was made.

The Argument: Throughout the course of the case, every Justice -- except for the famously quiet Clarence Thomas -- asked a question to at least one of the two lawyers. Some of them were even rather snarky, and there were some pretty funny moments, to be honest.  I was surprised at how much humor a lot of the justices and the lawyers showed during the session. For example, Justice Gorsuch, after asking about the scope of the overlap between bankruptcy and security transactions, and getting a rather dodgy 'I don't have the numbers" response, quipped: "So [...] a triviality we don't need to worry about, even though it was a central feature of the Seventh Circuit's opinion?"

Based on their questions, it seemed to us that the Justices were already leaning on how the case was going to go, and were mainly prodding the two lawyers to check the scope of their decision -- and that they thought that the transaction should NOT be a protected one. For instance, Justice Breyer made a query about the limits of this type of ruling: if such transfers were protected, wouldn't just telling a bank to transfer shares from the bank to your wife be protected as well? Similarly, Chief Justice Roberts followed up on a line broached by the lawyer for FTI Consulting, asking why, if they ruled in favor of Merit Management, checks going through a bank would not similarly be protected transactions. By the end it seemed the lawyer for Merit Management was squirming a lot more than the one for FTI Consulting, and that the latter case seemed far easier to defend.

The Result: I'll definitely be following up on this and reading the decision when it is released, likely in a few months time. While I suspect I know which side the court will rule on, exactly how the decision is argued was *not* made clear, and will determine the scope of how the case can be used in future bankruptcy cases. Depending on how they argue it, it could be broad or narrow. I look forward to hearing the results, and HIGHLY recommend that anyone interested in our government's inner workings try their luck for attending a full argument.

Golden Geese and Other Goodies

I am now a month into my fellowship, and two weeks into my stay as a Fellow hosted at NSF. And I've been keeping quite busy!

On the work end of things, I’ve been running all over! I’ve been trying to get a feel for the various projects and foci of the CRS group within CNS in CISE at NSF. (And there are so many new acronyms to learn, too! Computer Systems Research; Computer Networking Systems; Computer and Information Science and Engineering; National Science Foundation; FYI.) I’ve been getting familiar with the building and it’s quirks (the elevators are VERY fancy -- so fancy, in fact, that I got stuck in one within 15 minutes of entering the building for the first time). NSF just moved locations so not only am *I* unfamiliar with the layout, so is everyone else! For this reason, I’ve been making a point of taking all the AV training and the like, so I can help my group with all the newness as best I can. I have my own work computer, I have an official badge I can ‘beep’ in and out of the building and the more secure floors with, and it seems like my group works on a lot of interesting things! Everything from grant panels, to outreach programs, to career/industry training, to online performances, to international collaborations.

I'm also attending a lot of events through my fellowship program. The AAAS fellowship program (another acronym -- as a reminder, this one is the American Association for the Advancement of Science) has a lot of different workshops, events, social groups, networking events, happy hours, and seminars that the fellows are invited to attend. For example, one of the social affinity groups basically just tries a new restaurant in DC every month. When I heard about it, I decided that it OBVIOUSLY was the best social group, don’t you think? 

Also through the AAAS group, I went to the “Golden Goose” award ceremony last Wednesday, which was a LOT of fun. The Golden Goose awards were created in order to honor science that had, shall we say, unusual, obscure, or controversial beginnings. This award was conceived of as a contrast a congressman's annual ‘golden fleece awards’ – highlighting projects that used federal funding that he felt were ‘fleecing’ the American taxpayer by funding silly research. But research can have very humble, or even silly origins, since it usually starts with a question which doesn’t have a obvious or even noticeably useful answer. One of the speakers at the event had a great quote from Isaac Asimov, where he said: "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not, 'Eureka! I've found it,' but, 'That's funny!'" It’s impossible to say where the next big breakthrough is going to come about, especially when research can be full of serendipity. 

So the awards on Wednesday honored three projects: mussels sticking to rocks, ‘fuzzy math’, and an obscure type of fungus that practically no one cared at all about for ages. Or rather: research that eventually turned into an adhesive that is currently in 60% of American-made plywood, dramatically changing the industry and removing the irritant formaldehyde for a far more eco-friendly adhesive. A method of analysis and statistics for situations where the answers and parameters aren’t always clear, with large commercial implications/applications in industry. And the answer to a decades old question of why certain populations of frogs seemed to die out with no immediate cause detected. The award ceremony was quite enjoyable -- I really enjoyed hearing about the science, the MC was very entertaining, plus we heard from at least 4 different representatives from congress. The reception was also particularly neat -- it was held in the beautiful hall of the Library of Congress, where we could wander over and view the reading room from above while drinking champagne and eating delicious grilled shrimp, mussels, and other hors d'oeuvres.

And last, by not least, on the home front, I’m enjoying being back in a city with all that THAT entails.  I’m living very close, within a half mile, of the new NSF building, so I can walk to work. The metro station is literally across the street from the building, so I can go into DC with ease. I'm within walking distance of Old Town Alexandria, which is full of adorable shops and delicious restaurants. There are excellent Korean and Vietnamese restaurants not even a 15 minute drive away, and I can and an excellent Mediterranean and great French restaurants literally on my walk to work. I’m going to miss Green Bank – the beauty the mountains, the quiet, the outdoor opportunities, but I gotta say, the number one thing I missed there were good restaurants within a reasonable distance! So, life is pretty good right now -- busy, but good!

Watch Out, Washington!

Hello World!

After a year and a half at the Green Bank Observatory, I have once again started a new chapter of my life. I am now a Science and Technology Policy Fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)! This is similar to a post-doc in that it is a one to two year non-permanent position for people who have received a PhD (in this case, specifically PhDs in STEM fields). However, this position is completely outside of academia. Instead of working at a university or research institution, I am being hosted at a government agency: the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Alexandria, VA. My fellow Fellows have been placed at a host of government departments and agencies throughout the DC-metro area -- in some cases, even congressional offices!

I have a long-standing interest in politics and policy (see one of my very first blog posts!). And I am trained, in my PhD work, as an astronomer -- a scientist. So this fellowship seemed like a natural fit for me. It is designed to bring more scientists to Washington, and to train them in the workings of policy --  specifically science policy and using science to shape policy. I have now finished my initial two week orientation. I have heard many truly fascinating talks on everything from using science effectively in building policy, to the legislation process, to networking strategies, to the creation of the US Constitution. And for speakers, amongst others, we've heard  a congressman (Bill Foster, Illinois), a federal judge, and an ambassador! So it's been quite a varied two weeks!

I have not yet begun my time at the NSF -- my first day is this Monday. What will I be doing? Well, the short answer is: I don't know yet. I will be working at the Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) at the NSF. There are a wide range of projects I could end up working on, so right now, I'm keeping my mind open and my options flexible. I likely won't be working very much on Astronomy-related things, I suspect, but I'm looking forwards to applying my talents to other areas.

If you are a PhD or PhD candidate and would like to try something different, I would highly recommend checking out this program! You need to be a US Citizen and have a PhD in a STEM related field, and you can be in any stage of your career -- I've met both people right out of grad school, and people who are tenured and taking a year's sabbatical!

Whether I go back to academia after my fellowship or if I stay in policy, I am sure I'll be learning a LOT throughout this fellowship and really get a new perspective. It should be interesting to explore something I'm less familiar with and, I hope, make a difference to this country.

Ramping Up

Spoils of the hunt!

One of the things that's a little tough about living in Green Bank is that to get really good produce, you have to go quite aways. Generally, most things -- be they shops, restaurants, grocery stores, or whatever -- are at least 40 minutes away. However, if you DO find fresh produce around here, it has the potential to be very, VERY fresh.

A bit over a week ago, one of the locals took a group of us out ramp hunting. If you are not familiar with these little delights, they are a type of wild onion, basically. They have a bit more of a garlicy flavor than some, and you can use them how you would use green onions, scallions, or things of that nature. Prior to this, the last time I'd picked them was when I was hiking the A.T.; we happened across a patch and just picked a few to add to our cooking pots that night. I would occasionally see them at the farmers market in NYC, but they have a fairly short limited growing season and tended to be expensive -- you really do have to trek out somewhere in the wilds to get them! But now I'm living in (or at least, near) the wilds, which means, RAMP HUNTING.


It was a fun experience, the person who took us out clearly knew exactly where they tended to grow, so the group of us were digging up and down and all around a creek that was simply swamped with the things. There were half a dozen of us, digging for at least 45 minutes, and we barely made a dent on them. We washed them up a bit in the creek, then brought them home. I brought home two big bags, one of which I gave away to a friend who'd not been able to join, and I still haven't finished cooking all of them up. So far I've made buttermilk ramp biscuits (with bacon!), fried fish with ramp aioli, ramp-and-lettuce soup (mixing two separate recipes), and I've generally just thrown them into several other dishes I've made (squash with ramps, chicken with ramps, BLTs with ramps etc). It's been fun cooking with them! They're very inspiring.


Yeah, this is a short post, I know, but hey. I've been busy. And look! I'm trying to update regularly again! Go me!

Life at the GBT

The Green Bank Telescope -- my new workplace!

Hey all! I'm now about a month into my new postdoc at the Green Bank Telescope, and so far, so good! A lot of my time so far has just been getting familiar with everything -- attending meetings (whether I know what they're talking about or not), reading the various guides to observing and proposing for time on the telescope, and meeting lots and lots of new people. I've taken a tour of the telescope, and I'm going to be starting my formal training on dealing with the telescope and doing support work next week, which will be roughly half of what I do here (the other half, of course, being SCIENCE!).

For the past couple of weeks, I've also started getting back into my own science work. A project I'm on got some observations recently on the VLA, so I was going through data for that for a bit, and I'm starting to work my way through the referee report of a paper I wrote last fall. The paper in question came back to me right at the peak of my "Gah! Gotta finish my thesis!" push, so even though I've had the report for a while now, I only recently started to make corrections on it. So it feels pretty good to be thinking about science again.

My new house!

Green Bank itself is quite different from New York City, as you can imagine.  It's a very small town and is literally situated in a National Forest, and the entire area is beautiful. There is a lot of good hiking -- a couple folks from NRAO took me out hiking one Sunday for a hike up one of the nearby mountains, stopping for lunch at the top, and we saw a trio of bears on the way back down! (Momma and two cubs, so we kept our distance.) There are also regularly large numbers of deer in the field in front of my house, so that's rather neat, as well. Springtime is (hopefully) here, but we  can apparently get snow into May, according the the people here! For a while it seemed like the weather couldn't make up it's mind, it snowed one day and was gorgeous the next.

View from my back door a few weeks ago,
when there was still snow!

We *are* in the middle of the Radio Quiet Zone. This was established back in the 50's to keep the radio noise around the telescope as low as possible. This means there is NO cell phone reception or radio reception or wifi ANYWHERE in the surrounding area. I cannot have a microwave, wifi, or even a wireless phone in my house. It takes some adjustment -- honestly the thing that's throwing me the most is the lack of microwave and not being able to reheat leftovers in 5 minutes. That and the fact that, while there are a couple convenience stores in town, to do a *thorough* grocery store run I have to go at least an hour away. This past weekend I went to Lewisburg (1.5 hrs away) to go grocery shopping and go to the movies (I saw Zootopia -- fun movie!).


I am renting a house(!) about a mile from where I work -- this is the first time I've lived without a roommate, and I now I have a 3 bedroom 2 bath house all to myself. This is quite a change from my shared NYC apartment. I've set up one of the bedrooms into a guest room, and the other I am making into an office for myself. Well, that's the goal, anyway -- it's still kind of full of the boxes I haven't unpacked yet. I've unpacked all the *critical* stuff -- clothes, stuff for the kitchen, books, CD's and DVDs -- but I admit I'm being rather slow on the unpacking of things that I don't need on a daily basis.

That's all for now, just a short update. So many new things in my life right now!

A New Start!

Post-defence celebrations!

Many important things have happened since the last time I wrote here, the most important of which is: I successfully defended my thesis!  The defence itself went well, as did turning in the thesis, but the week prior to each was rather stressful, trying to get everything done. Not only that, the week prior to my defence I was feeling rather under the weather, and to top it off, on Wednesday night my computer DIED. And I hadn't backed up my slides and notes sufficiently. So I basically had to redo the majority of the slides for my defence which was NOT NOT NOT fun at all. As you can imagine, I was in a bit of a state. But as I said, the defence itself went well. The morning of, I actually found that a friend of mine had left "before" and "after" gifts for me on my desk -- the before was a stuffed snake toy (in reference to this amazing essay), and the after was a flask of whiskey. Both were very much appreciated and helped calm my nerves.

Not only did I defend, but I have also been hired as a post-doc at NRAO's Green Bank Telescope, in West Virginia, where I will be starting in late March! I'm really looking forwards to the new position, and I expect to learn a lot.  I've been joking that this will make me a "real astronomer" since I'll actually be working at a telescope and taking actual observations.  While I am an observationalist (as opposed to a theorist), all my data for my thesis has been from radio observations. So, while I wrote numerous proposals, got approved for telescope time, and had to figure out the details of the runs, I didn't actually do the observations myself --- I sent off  the relevant info to the VLA, and they scheduled the observations and sent me the data back. Even though I've been out to various telescopes, the only time I actually controlled a 'scope and took my own data on was on a class trip to MDM observatory in Arizona, and was for a class project, not my research (though it was a great experience). I am also not counting the observations I've done teaching labs or doing outreach, since those experiences aren't taking data for research so much as showing people the stars and explaining the awesome stuff that exists in the sky.

Anyway, I turned in my thesis on January 15th, and defended on January 29th. Since then, I've moved out of my apartment in NYC and shipped a bunch of stuff down to WV, where it is in storage. I stayed with my parents in Baltimore for a week, and now am in Cambridge in the UK visiting Benson. I'll be here for about a month, then going back to Baltimore until I move to Green Bank. I haven't bought a new computer yet -- I kind of want to wait until I've gotten to my new job, to see what kind of set up I will have there and what kind of computational needs I'll have. For now, Benson has kindly given me his old computer (very similar to the one I had that died) that he is no longer using, having upgraded about a year or so ago. So I can just use this one until I've decided exactly what I want/need to replace my old one. Happily, I did back up *that* computer regularly, even if I hadn't backed it up sufficiently close to the crash to save my slides, so I have all my work. The only thing I lost was the slides and notes. Which, well, was enough.

I've been having a lovely time in the UK. It is always good to see Benson and spend time with him, and it's been lovely to just relax and not worry about work, to take a real vacation. This past weekend, some good friends of ours -- Dahlia and Paul -- were in London for *their* vacation, so we met up with them twice! They came into Cambridge one day, and we went into London another. When in London, we went to a great restaurant -- Dinner by Heston Blumenthal -- which we all REALLY enjoyed a LOT. They take historical British recipes and modernize them somewhat to make an absolutely fantastic menu. We all got different things so we could try as much as possible, and split several of the appetizers and desserts. It's hard to chose favorites, since everything we got was fantastic, but I'd particularly recommend the roast marrowbone and meat fruit appetizers and the tipsy cake for dessert. The mains it's harder to chose one thing -- the duck breast was amazing, the ribeye was an extremely flavorful steak, and the halibut was a really well made dish.

Anyway, again, I've been having a great vacation. And I am both really happy and kind of sad about finishing my thesis -- it was so much work, it's very strange to be done with it. Even if research goes on and ever on, and I will be continuing my work on parts of it, having one big written work describing everything I have worked on is an odd experience. Here is 6 years of my life in 231 pages, right?? But for now, I'll relax a bit longer and then start on my next big experience!