After the conference in India I was really gratified by the wave of interest in liberal arts in India. Our hosts, Ashoka, Jindal and Shiv Nadar, were extremely gracious, and I admire the courage, energy and intelligence which as launched all three projects. Bringing all this together in India has been a wonderful experience, and […]
Our final day of the conference was perhaps my favorite. We were hosted by the University of Chicago’s New Delhi Center, and as a U of C alum (PhD Astrophysics ’85!) it was great to see the center, which seems just perfect for enabling strong engagement with India, academic collaborations, conferences and any number of […]
In the second day of the conference, we were based at a new University outside of New Delhi called the O.P. Jindal Global University. This institution was founded by a partnership between the charismatic founding Vice Chancellor, Raj Kumar, and O.P. Jindal, an Indian billionaire who made a fortune on steel and other primary resources. […]
This week I am at the Future of Liberal Arts in India 2015 meeting in New Delhi. I can’t express how gratifying it is to see so many enthusiastic and brilliant educators gathering together to discuss exciting new curriculum, new universities, and new approaches to educating students in India, the US and Singapore. The conference […]
As part of my work organizing “Global Liberal Arts” conferences for Yale-NUS (including our October 2015 campus opening) I am learning more about leading programs in Asia for undergraduate liberal arts. During February 2015 I met with officials from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. My astronomy connections have enabled me to connect with Henry Wong, […]
During the early part of 2015, I organized a conference at Yale-NUS College, Singapore, that gathered astronomers from across Asia to discuss ways to coordinate our observing and to do some exciting new projects in time-domain astronomy. The meeting web site is at http://gonsso.commons.yale-nus.edu.sg/. The meeting included a day of discussions at our Yale-NUS College in […]
During December of 2014 the National Central University, Taiwan, invited me to visit them and give a scientific talk to their astronomy department. While there I had a chance to visit their Lulin Observatory, one of the leading Asian observatories, with several large 1.0-meter class telescopes and a new 2.0 meter telescope in the works. […]
As part of my astronomy research, I am visiting NCU Taiwan, where Wing Ip has invited me to visit their Lulin Observatory and to give a talk on Friday. NCU is the former Nanjing University from mainland China, which was relocated to Taiwan after 1947. It is one of the leading research universities of Taiwan, […]
We are having a conference in Singapore, gathering astronomers from Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Philippines, India and California, to discuss new modes of observing that make use of coordinated global networks of telescopes. Our web site for the meeting is at http://gonsso.commons.yale-nus.edu.sg/ – below is a map showing the observatories that are participating in the […]
This is my experiment to bring the many different projects I am working on – liberal arts in Asia, astrophysics of quasars, time-domain astronomy, STEM education, archaeoastronomy, and book writing – all in one place! Some call this a “media platform” and so for now that is what I am calling it. I hope you […]