Attending AAS 247 in Phoenix

I spent a week in Phoenix attending the American Astronomical Society’s 247th Meeting. This was my first research-specific conference for my new job, and while I am a complete n00b when it comes to astronomy research, it was fun being among nerds obsessed with the universe. I was mostly advocating for and spreading the word about our newish Institute, funded by the NSF and Simons Foundation, to explore harnessing and building AI models to answer the big questions in astronomy.

I spent the bulk of my time in the Exhibit Area, where we had rented a booth space and had plenty of swag to dole out. Our tote bags and the squishy stress/fidget balls were a big hit. We managed to go through our entire 500 items we had shipped to the conference, which was a relief since we didn’t want to spend more to ship them back to Austin.

Surprisingly, we received significant interest from undergraduates participating in NSF’s REU program at various universities. Naturally, many students’ interests are piqued by the possibilities of AI, and our 5-day boot camp, as well as an online graduate certificate program, generated much interest. Our mailing list definitely grew a lot. Older faculty were definitely skeptical, but we mentioned that we’re building everything openly, publishing our research continually, and will publish our AI models with their weights, and that we’re not simply using ChatGPT.

The more fun part of the conference (for me) was the swag. Apparently, astronomers are big on stickers and pins. Some of them, including NSF, had coloring books too. I loaded up on the stickers and pins and got a few for my son, who is starting to get interested in physics and astronomy for some reason.

The conference is long, and I started to tire out by day four, but I had made plans to stay back another day and visit Taliesin West, one of the places I wanted to in my undergraduate architecture days. More on that later.