Group meetings

Naturally, there are several groups of people in the IAA that meet periodically according to their interests or fields of work. I won't bore you with the names of the groups, specially because I do not know their exact number. A short time after I arrived here, I was invited to assist to the weekly meetings of the Late Stars Group. The meetings were usually very interesting, even if I have worked very little in that field. While they lasted, because after the two postdocs that were more active maintaining the flow left, there have not been any more meetings. Something similar probably happened to the meetings of the Star Formation Group, which aremuch closer to what I have been working on. I was told when I arrived that they had not met for months. I gave a talk for one meeting in August and that was all; no other meeting.

That is, until recently. Two of the postdocs and I met to draft some ideas or proposals to try to bring these meetings back to life. One of the drawbacks of these kind of meetings is that maybe too many people go and the speakers are prone to giving a kind of monolithic talk, that does not invite much to the participation of the audience and it is very tiresome to prepare. What happens then?, that once everybody has done his/her bit, nobody can be bothered to do it again.

So, this time, we decided to do it less formal, meet in a smaller room, give a little introduction on the subject and see where the discussion would take us. The first time to do it was yesterday and I believe it was a complete success. We were there almost an hour and a half, with many interventions —prompted by the controversial spirit of the director— and a wide range of questions were raised. It may not be too useful in the short term, but it is one of those things that motivate me: to learn things, to be able to discuss several aspects related to the problem (or not), and you never know where it will end.

We will see how the next meetings go. In two weeks, it's my turn. They want me to talk about something related to Astrochemistry. Let's see what I can make up.