Outreach & Education
Talks, trips, and programs I've taken part in to share astronomy and science with more people. Would you like me to come talk to a group or class? Please contact me, I would probably love to!
***Often updated!***
- In January 2024, I and my Fulbright mentor, Dr. Thebe Medupe of South Africa, featured in the Simons Foundation "Presents: To the Stars and Back." In a panel with Elizabeth Simolke of the Science, Society, and Culture division of the Foundation, Thebe and I reminisced about my Fulbright year and talked about our passion for the sky, how humans across the world (particularly in Africa) have thought about it, and the ways we're working to make it more accessible to everyone today. His visits to the Flatiron Institute and Princeton University were also wonderful, and are sure to lead to interesting scientific and outreach collaboration in the future.
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Lucia, Thebe, and Elizabeth pose before the panel
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Lucia and Thebe in conversation
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A view from the audience during the panel
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Afterwards in conversation over drinks and snacks
- Also in January 2024, I took part in a panel hosted by the Community Bots and the Parent's League about careers for the "Girls in STEM" panel series. In partnership with my alma mater, The Nightingale-Bamford School, I and several other esteemed women in careers spanning fields and types of science talked about our paths and perspectives to a room of families. https://www.parentsleague.org/event/girls-stem
- In June 2023, I was granted the remarkable honor of giving the commencement address to this year's graduating class at my beloved high school alma mater, the Nightingale Bamford School. You can watch my address here (roughly 47:50 - 1:07:00).
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With the Head of the Upper School (right) and the Head of School (behind).
- As a postdoc at Princeton, I've led a bilingual Spanish-English observing night for primary school students. I helped run similar observing events while at Arizona State.
- Reporting on my visit to a Spanish class in 2021 to talk about my experience observing in the Atacama desert, and the intersection of astronomy, land, and politics.:
- A highlight of my Fulbright experience was supporting my mentor, Dr. Thebe Medupe, in the 2016 Winter School he helped create for South Africa's National Astrophysics and Space Science Programme. I led a small group of math and physics undergraduate students in a project measuring the photometry of stars in clusters using the Virtual Observatory. I also helped mentor and manage the larger group of undergraduates in this wonderful experience.
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The 2016 Winter School visiting the South African Large Telescope.