The Rochester Section of the Optical Society of America hosts an annual business meeting and dinner featuring an update of the year's activities and a special guest speaker. The details for this year's annual dinner meeting is as follows:
5:30 p.m. Networking
6:30 p.m. Dinner
7:00 p.m. Business Meeting
8:00 p.m. Talk by Mario Perez, NASA
9:00 p.m. Adjournment
Dr. Mario R. Perez
Astrophysics Division, NASA Headquarters
Astrophysics and Recent Discoveries
Astrophysical sciences explore the nature of the Universe at its largest scale, its earliest moments, and its most extreme conditions. In the last decades, many new discoveries have been made from both ground- and space-based telescopes. These discoveries include advancements in our understanding of the composition of the Universe, the existence of dark energy, the detection of gravitational waves, the imaging of black holes and of protoplanetary disks, and the discovery of nearly 7,000 exoplanets (about 4,000 confirmed), providing extraordinary new insights into the nature, physics and origins of the Universe.
Space astrophysics at NASA supports a vibrant program in theoretical, observational, and technology development for future missions. No one space or airborne observatory can provide all the answers. The astrophysics portfolio of flight missions includes telescopes both present and future, that together operate and will cover a wide swath across the electromagnetic spectrum, from the gamma-ray through the far-infrared and sub-millimeter. Currently, only ground-based facilities have detected new messengers such as neutrinos and gravitational waves.
In this talk, I will describe some of the most exciting astrophysical discoveries of the last decade and I will explain some of the future challenges for this observational field.
Bio
Dr. Perez is the Program Scientist for the Cosmic Origins Program, the Kepler/K2 mission and the Strategic Astrophysics Technology (SAT) Program within the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters, Science Mission Directorate. He is also the Program Executive for several Exoplanet Programs such as the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI), W.M. Keck Observatory, NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI) and the NASA-NSF Exoplanet Observational Research (NN-EXPLORE) partnership. In addition, he is one of the Discipline Scientists for the UV/Visible portfolio, which includes grants that conduct investigations on detector development, suborbital payloads, laboratory astrophysics and supporting technologies. These grants are funded annually through the Astronomy and Physics Research and Analysis (APRA) program within the Research Opportunity in Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES) solicitation.
Dr. Perez came from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), where he spent seven years working on space, astrophysics and technology issues. Prior to this appointment he worked in the Washington DC area both for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center as IUE resident astronomer and for NASA science contracts with several corporations. He completed his undergraduate studies in Electrical Engineering and Physics and started working in astronomy while at the European Southern Observatory (Chile and Germany). He received his Ph.D. in physics and astronomy from Brigham Young University and a MBA from University of New Mexico. Dr. Perez’s research interests include star formation, young stellar objects - in particular Herbig Ae/Be stars - stellar populations in galaxies, ultraviolet spectroscopy, and space instrumentation.
Registration fees and payment
- $35 for OSA-RS regular member
- $10 for OSA-RS student member
- $45 for non-member guests
- No charge for OSA-RS honorary members
- Cash bar is available.
- Reservations (including guest names) must be made by April 29, 2019
If you can't register on-line or wish to pay by check, please make out a check to "OSA Rochester Section" and send it to:
OSA Rochester Section
David Compertore, C/O Lumetrics
1565 Jefferson Road #420
Rochester NY 14623
No tickets will be distributed. Confirmed reservations will be placed on a list.
