Well 2019 was okay? I did feel overwhelmed with work load at times but this was just because I was in the state of having too many different things to do at times it was difficult to work out which one to do first! While I haven't been as productive as I think I should have been I have been productive. I've also been able to recover still from 2016/7 that were too busy and stressful. I know I just need to try to not overwork or expect too much of myself again. And I definitely need to be more active, I do a lot of walking everyday but need to do more fun exercise.
In terms of family life that was really the priority this year and another reason I was most stressed at times is a I put being a parent first while also trying to do all my work. This led to working 7 days a week, catching up at the weekends with everything I didn't get done during the week.
But on the other hand the big thing that happened this year is that I applied for promotion to an Associate Professor, which I was successful in! So this just means I need to keep going as I'm doing something right.
Anyway her is my highlights of the year! And I've probably forgotten something!
Anyway things I’ve done in research. First I’ve been on 6 (+1) refereed (submitted) articles this year:
- Three first author papers:
- Eldridge & Xiao, The distance, supernova rate, and supernova progenitors of NGC6946, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.00173.pdf
- Eldridge et al, Supernova lightCURVE POPulation Synthesis II: Validation against supernovae with an observed progenitor, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1908.07762.pdf
- Eldridge et al., Weighing in on black hole binaries with BPASS: LB-1 does not contain a 70M(Sun) black hole, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.03599.pdf [Note - currently only submitted but so proud of it, especially as it's a strong team effort, decided to include it! :o) ].
- Student/close collaborator papers:
- Gilkis, Vink, Eldridge & Tout, Effects of winds on the leftover hydrogen in massive stars following Roche lobe overflow, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.09221.pdf
- Schady et al., The 50-100 pc scale parent stellar populations of Type II supernovae and limitations of single star evolution models, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.12260.pdf
- Chrimes, Stanway & Eldridge, Binary population synthesis models for core-collapse gamma-ray burst progenitors, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1911.08387.pdf
- Tang et al., Dependence of Gravitational Wave Transient Rates on Cosmic Star Formation and Metallicity Evolution History, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.04474.pdf
- I'm quite proud of all these papers but Petra Tang's letter on the GW transient event rate deserves a special mention as it's her first paper and the result of her masters thesis work.
- Attended the Space Telescope Institute Spring Symposium meeting in Baltimore, USA. https://cloudproject.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=15b2b77e-6ba2-4f05-ad61-aa3800de38c4
- Attended the Fifty-One Erg meeting in North Carolina, USA.
- Attended the Stars in Monash meeting in Melbourne, Australia.
- Recruited a post-doc, Dr Heloise Stevance, who has already begun work using BPASS to study galaxies and more! (See https://heloises.github.io/hoki/).
- Also recruited a PhD student who should make it to Auckland in 2020!
- Won the Faculty of Science award for sustained excellence in teaching!
- Had a second student, John Bray, go through their graduation ceremony!
- Lectured the 1st year astronomy course twice again which went well but improvements still to be made.
- Also lectured 2nd year quantum mechanics for the first time. Was quite stressful and I learnt a lot but it was fun in the end.
- Taught 1 honors project student and 2 masters student.
- Was "deputy head academic" for first half of the year. This was interesting and contributing to the broader development of teaching across the Faculty of Science. This was a significant time load, especially in putting together course descriptions and amendments as well as creating entirely new courses. But it was a positive experience and unfortunately means I'll probably end up doing the job in a few years.
- Also a big thing is I lectured as myself consistently for most of my lectures this year. This is a small step but my lecturing was so much better because of it.
Things I’ve done in Service & Leadership
- Again this year I didn't do as much as I have in previous years but then there hasn't been the need. Although looking ahead to next year I can see more work that needs to be done.
- Didn't give many public talks this year but did give one in North Carolina with Katie Mack! (@AstroKatie from twitter) about the different ways the Universe can kill us.
- Helped on the steering committee for the "Our World Our Universe" faculty research theme. Also recorded this interview describing my science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9eFWbjd1Kw
- Had a radio interview with Damian Christie as part of a show on "Where do I come from?" https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ourchangingworld/audio/2018726643/origins-the-big-bang-human-evolution-and-polynesian-migrations
- Again a member of the ASA IDEA committee and helped work out who gets the Pleiades awards! https://asa-idea.org/
