On July 9, 2018 the science staff will meet in the auditorium (14:00) to discuss proposals for workshops and smaller meetings to be held at STScI in 2019.

Proposers should provide basic information on their meeting below; template headings are provided that you can fill in.

You can post your presentation slides below; please do so by July 3.  They should include:

• Workshop title and proposer/PI
• What makes this topic compelling right now?
• What makes the topic compelling for STScI, our missions, and our staff?  (This is not a requirement for a workshop.)
• What similar meetings are known at this time?
• Who will be on the SOC?
• What are key subjects and potential speakers?
  
  

TESS Data Workshop  (Doing science with TESS)

Proposers

Susan Mullally and Jeff Valenti

Preferred dates (optional), with comments

2019 Feb 11-14

Presentation slides

Q & A:

• Q: How much TESS data will be released at the end of 2018 (and hence be available for workshop)?
  • A: Six "sectors" of data, which is approximately 1/4 of the sky. Thereafter, one additional sector will be released every 27 days. TESS will tile the sky with 26 sectors.
• Q: Are members of the SOC listed in the slides?  (Jeff Valenti only showed and spoke to Slide 2 at the meeting)
  • A: Yes, current SOC+LOC members are listed on slide 13. One update: Giovanni is leaving in September to work on CHEOPS, so he will not remain on the LOC. We may add 2-3 more external members before the SOC meeting next week.
• Q: Will TESS science results be embargoed until the TESS science conference Jul 29-Aug 2?
  • A: No. When data become public starting Dec 2018 and every 27 days thereafter, the community will start publishing results. Some groups will publish immediately, similar to Gaia data releases. We will ask the TESS team whether already published science results can be presented at our workshop, which is our preference.
• Q: Will TESS data be useful for more than exoplanets?
  • Yes! TESS will yield exciting results for exoplanets, stellar astrophysics, galactic and extragalactic astrophysics, and solar system science. TESS will also publish alerts for transients.

Python in Astronomy Conference 2019 at STScI

Proposers:

Erik Tollerud, Steve Crawford, Josh Peek, Iva Momcheva

Preferred dates (optional), with comments

April 29 - May 3.

The workshop is typically held the first week of May but there is flexibility. SMO has indicated it shouldn't be too close to the symposium, and the SOC chair has indicated SMO-suggested dates in July/August should be fine.

Presentation slides

Q & A:

• Q: How will you balance the needs of the locals with the needs of the external community for this conference?
  • A: The conference participants are selected using an algorithm ("entrofy" - the same one used for .Astronomy this year), which allows explicitly selecting a certain fraction of locals, while still balancing diversity in other criteria like gender or seniority.  This allows us to explicitly ensure it's a large enough fraction that STScI benefits while not so large that it turns into an all-STScI event.
• Q: Will the fact that the series has an external SOC make it not pay attention to the needs of STScI?
  • A: The existing SOC chair is aware that we have special requirements/expectations.  It shouldn't be thought of strictly as "Science" and "Local" - the SOC is more the "external" group.  They understand that we expect certain things in return for hosting, and it'll be the "LOC"'s job to communicate those things - sort of the "benefit" of an SOC without all the work... Additionally, there is an SOC member who is also STScI staff (Nick Earl).
• Q: Is the "normally 5 days" a problem?
  • A: SMO says this is negotiable, dependent mainly on exactly which week (and the availability of SMO staff)
• Q: Will we be able to "try again" next year since it's a series?
  • A: Probably not for several years - the conference tries to spread itself out geographically, so it may not be back to the East Coast of the US for several years.

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Enabling Multi-Messenger Astrophysics in the Big Data Era

Proposer:

Gautham Narayan

Preferred dates (optional), with comments

Book-ended with 2019 Spring Symposium.
This workshop was planned together with the Spring Symposium and we feel there are many scientific and logistical advantages to running both symposium and workshop back-to-back, though both stand on their own.

Presentation slides

Link to Keynote Version (82 MB)

Q & A:

• Q: Laura Watkins: The symposium is 3.5 days while the workshops are normally 2.5 days, and the week is only 5 days, so does running both together detract from both the symposium and the workshop? + Joel Green: Is the plan 3.5 days + 2.5 days = 6 or ?
  
  
  • A: No, I don't believe so. There's clear intersection and overlap between the symposium (defines the science goals) and the workshop (start to build infrastructure and connect a disparate, patchwork ecosystem together to achieve those science goals). I feel it's beneficial to hold both back-to-back as this really connects the scientific questions with how the science can practically be accomplished with the terabyte-scale streams of alerts that we are now getting from projects like ZTF. This has not historically been the case in the transient community, and as a result, some of the standards and APIs developed in this field are disconnected from the science needs, and we have scientists who have questions that they are keen to answer but are unaware of the resources available, or need relatively simple extensions to existing infrastructure. I believe that running the workshop with the symposium will help address these disconnects.
    
    I'll also note that the symposium organizers have always been aware of the plan to run a workshop right after it, and the agenda was designed accordingly. The 3.5 day symposium agenda always included a last half-day discussion on future plans and infrastructure needs. The 2 day workshop turns that 1/2 day discussion into two hack-days with short presentations, and an emphasis on building infrastructure. A subset of the LOC is common between the symposium to make the transition smooth, and we expect that some of the participants in the workshop will also be here for the symposium. As such, the delineation between the two is artificial, and we expect productive discussions and infrastructure work to begin informally during the symposium itself. The two were designed to complement each other, and bring together people who work in the same field but have very different expertise and do not talk to each other nearly enough. This back-back scheduling also reduces the logistical burden on STScI staff while neatly still leaving three slots for other workshops (i.e. you can vote for it, and it still doesn't cost any of the other excellent proposals! ).
• Q:
  • A:
    
    

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Constraining Structure in the Low Density Universe

Proposer

Karl Gordon & Ravi Sankrit & Low Density Universe Group

Preferred dates (optional), with comments

Summer/Fall 2019

Presentation slides

Q & A:

• Q:
  • A:
• Q:
  • A:

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Grism Spectroscopy Workshop

Proposer: Ivelina Momcheva

Preferred dates (optional), with comments: Fall 2019

Presentation slides:

Q & A:

• Q:
  • A:
• Q:
  • A:

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Testing galaxy transition using observations and simulations in the era of JWST

Proposer: Kate Rowlands (JHU) & Katey Alatalo (STScI)

Preferred dates (optional), with comments: Summer 2019 (quite flexible)

Presentation slides:

Q & A:

• Q:  You proposed that 30 people would attend. How flexible is this number given the large number of people that will likely want to attend?
  • A: Based on Kate & Katey's experience at a Lorentz Center workshop (Kate as organizer, Katey as attendee), we believe that we have the experience to be able to run a successful workshop with ~50 people and will expand our workshop group to a 50-person cap should we find that our workshop is popular.
    
    
• Q:  You have 20+ people on the SOC list, how is there going to be room for them all to attend?
  • A: Our SOC list was designed to be an inclusive "super-list", listing those who would be interested in such a workshop, and we plan on drawing on that super-list both to determine members of the SOC, as well as invited speakers and discussion leaders in order to ensure diversity of experiences and scientific expertise.
    
    
• Q:  How are you going to ensure that the involved STScI staff are not concurrently the ones who are driving the JWST science discussions?
  • A: To explicitly address this, we will be appointing external (non-STScI) discussion leads for the 3rd day of the workshop, who will be tasked with leading discussion and summarizing the consensus of the group.
    
    

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