“ciao” is challenging to spell when you’ve slept in 2 hour chunks the night before 😵‍💫 #iykyk #xraysarethebestrays #somanyvowelssomanycombos

I’m hiring a postdoc to work with me at UMBC on AGN and galaxy mergers 💫 Details: apply.interfolio.com/180085 Please share & feel free to message me with any questions!

I spent so many hours in this library when I was a student, wandering through its cool collection, reading and learning. “…the federal government will store some of the collection in warehouses and trash the rest.” Absolutely heartbreaking 💔

Writing an NSF AAG with my 4 m/o permanently attached to me and averaging <2 hours of consecutive sleep… my dear collaborators, please triple-check all my text. (I’m so grateful for this little human, and for the ability to keep doing what I love, even if a bit more slowly these days.)

Valuable info about the Physics Nobel Prize today from Prof. Joseph Barranco at SFSU on Martinis and Devoret being a grad student and postdoc in Clarke's lab at UC Berkeley & Clark and Devoret being immigrants. "California *public* education made this happen. Immigration made this happen." ⚛️

Find yourself a friend like @astronomay.bsky.social who drops off Taylor Swift–themed desserts while you’re on maternity leave 😍🔥 (I’ve only managed to snap a photo ... demanding, but cute, baby won’t let me actually eat them yet)

When Adi Foord's work on supermassive black holes received NSF funding, it created prime opportunities for UMBC students to contribute, like Ph.D. student Zack Reeves and his research on pairs of black holes in the early stages of a potential merger. umbc.edu/stories/blac...

Thanks to the @umbc.edu for highlighting my recent NSF AAG grant and the student research it supports! And yes - I’m 38 weeks pregnant in these photos. I’m proud to show that it’s possible to lead a thriving science program while also prioritizing life outside of work 💫 umbc.edu/stories/blac...

A very curious 12-year old Kieran asked @theconversation.com, "How does the camera on the James Webb Space Telescope work and see so far out?" UMBC's @adifoord.bsky.social, assistant professor of physics, to the rescue! umbc.edu/stories/how-...

American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history The largest brain drain in history was when thousands of scientists left Nazi Germany; it became known as "Hitler's gift." America's current assault on science is set to surpass that. bigthink.com/starts-with-... #space #science

💥💥 Double detonation!  For the first time, astronomers have obtained visual evidence that a star met its end by detonating twice. The fingerprint that points to this mechanism is represented by two separate shells of calcium.   Read more: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2511/ 🔭 🧪 ☄️ 1/

The James Webb #Space Telescope doesn't take regular photos - its detectors convert infrared light to digital data, which scientists on Earth process into the stunning full-color space images we see. buff.ly/zKxkEBk #JWST By @adifoord.bsky.social, University of Maryland, Baltimore County 🔭

Check out my latest "Curious Kids" article with the @us.theconversation.com about how the James Webb Space Telescope can see so far back in time 💫🛰️🤩 theconversation.com/how-can-the-...

lol so many memories of stressful afternoons trying to perfectly time my submissions

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is releasing its first images on 23 June, showing us galaxies as we’ve never seen them before. Here’s how you can join a watch party to see those shots in full definition.

Don’t miss our interactive AGN SIG session TODAY at 10am AK! Come to Egan Rm 11/12 to learn about the progress we’ve made since the last Astro2020, the upcoming NASA mission capabilities, and where we go from here. #AAS246 🔭 cor.gsfc.nasa.gov/copag/meetin...

A wild @norashipp.bsky.social appears!

Don't miss our new NASA Science spending and economic impact resource at dashboards.planetary.org/nasa-science.html — see space science spending in every state and congressional district and custom reports for each region. A unique resource.

There's a lot to unpack in the president's FY26 requested #NASA budget, but the near zeroing of the physics of the cosmos program (from $196M to $1.5M) is especially bleak. If passed, the future of high-energy astrophysics is not in the US. 🔭

The White House Vision for Dismantling Science in One Simple Plot (Proposed NIH, NSF, and NASA budgets would be catastrophic for innovation and discovery. But they aren’t reality yet. The time to speak up is now.) joshuasweitz.substack.com/p/the-white-...

Got my PhD in Spring 2020 (peak lockdown, no hooding ceremony). Now I’m an Assistant Professor heading to undergrad commencement… and I have no clue how to wear this hood 😅🎓 Currently studying Google Images like it’s a final exam. Wish me luck! 👍

Grading is finished.

The homework has been graded... and a few students sent back secret codes with unique seeds for me to decipher on my end 🥹 "Your class was amazing to take" "You were an amazing professor to have" "I immensely enjoyed this class" "... this was a great class and I truly enjoyed it"

Wrapped up the last lecture of the semester and still standing! Today’s last student project presentation was an awesome one on Hawking Radiation — such a great way to end the semester 🎉 👏🏼 (I do have >30 hours of grading left, but we won’t think about that right now)

📞 Your voice matters! Today, call your senators and representatives to tell them why funding science and space is critical for America's future. It only takes a few minutes — and it can have a huge impact. #WeekOfAction ow.ly/m0oO50VN0Nm

✉️ It's time to speak up for science! Kick off our Week of Action by writing to your members of Congress. Urge them to robustly fund space science in FY 2026 & beyond. Every letter makes a difference! You can use our prompts for inspiration. #WeekOfAction aas.org/advocacy/get...

More urgent than ever, now is the time to call up your congresspeople (see e.g. AAS guide if you want): aas.org/urge-nasa-su...

Staff members at the US National Science Foundation (NSF) were told on 30 April to “stop awarding all funding actions until further notice,” according to an email seen by Nature. https://go.nature.com/44Ugf9V

Paper day! 🔥 Check out our newly published article on the discovery of a candidate hyperluminous X-ray source using Chandra: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3... #XraysAreTheBestRays

Happy birthday, Hubble! 🧪 🛰️ www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasa...

Normalizing the very normal in professional (& male-dominated) spaces — at this point, my work clothes can no longer hide the bump 🤷‍♀️ 😊 (Also yes, I have a walking pad… no, I am not weird)

Extra Extra: Paper day! 🚨📄 In our recently published paper, Mary Rickel and I and collaborators investigated whether the merging galaxy cluster environment affects the morphology of radio-AGN, and we find that it does!👇Thread. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

My computational physics class is learning about random processes, and this week I wrote a HW problem on pseudorandom number generators and secret codes.. ...I’ve hidden an extra code + key in a tiny footnote, and I can’t wait to see who finds it. This is my one source of joy right now. Stay tuned!

This really is an extinction level event for NASA's science programs. arstechnica.com/space/2025/0...

You don’t really appreciate the power of Fast Fourier transforms until you’re preparating a lecture + writing code for your Computational Physics course on Fast Fourier transforms.

In other news, today I was asked by one of my students if I owned a USB drive they could borrow to print a poster .... not one grad student in my group owns one

This administration is literally destroying US science. The NSF REU program is a foundational pathway for building the next generation science workforce. I say as an REU alum.

The supermassive black hole at the centre of our Galaxy is in continuous turmoil https://go.nature.com/4idPHnu

periodic reminder: if you're on the job market or want to give seminars anywhere, you really want to have a website & your CV and contact details available online!

Excited to be visiting Georgia Tech’s Physics department tomorrow, and looking forward to chatting with big group of SMBH merger enthusiasts who work there! 🔥 🕳️ 🕳️ 🔥 (& I am definitely not finishing my slides in the airport)

I’m extremely excited that I’ve been awarded an RCSA grant through my "Early Science with LSST" Fellowship, along with 7 other incredible science teams. Can’t wait to dive into year-1 data and find all the dual AGN!

Teaching a new class, amongst other work responsibilities, requires 40 hours/day, & I am exhausted. But, since I'm teaching Computational Physics, last night I got to play w/ COBE data + fit for the CMB temp; & plot sunspots vs. time .... and it was fun. Still v tired. But having some fun.

Got the email last night 😢

My Chandra shrine outside my office is complete — thanks to all the observatories that showed up at at @aasoffice.bsky.social for beautiful swag 🤩

For those of you who have taught computational physics and/or astronomy courses — What guidelines have you set regarding ChatGPT, etc? Have you changed the format of HWs, or take-home tests, to better measure if students are learning (and attempting to do the work on their own)?

Organizing all the files on my desktop is clearly the best use of my time… even if it takes hours… I’m not at all stressed about the time I’m losing … it’s all part of the long game—next semester, when my desktop is perfectly organized, I’ll be thanking my past self for this very moment ….

I’m proud to be a part of such an awesome team. If you missed our AXIS science session yesterday, check out our YouTube channel to see the recording! #AAS245

My very first conference was AAS in 2014 at National Harbor an undergraduate (my friend found this embarrassing photo of me that @aasoffice.bsky.social posted) And I feel like I’ve come full circle because …