Saturday – February 16, 2019, 9:30-11:00am
Milton J Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology – Syracuse, NY
Please RSVP to jrcafe@tacny.org
Speaker: Stefan W. Ballmer, PhD, Associate Professor of Physics, Syracuse University
Talk Overview: Come along on a journey to explore the most extreme corners of the universe. We will encounter places where every-day geometry stops working and the time stands still. We will witness black holes and neutron stars on collision courses, smashing into each other at half the speed of light, producing some of the biggest known explosions in the universe. And I will take you behind the curtains of a brand-new, one-of-a-kind astronomical observatory: The Advanced Laser Gravitational-Wave Interferometer, a machine capable of measuring the vibrations in the fabric of space and time.
Biography: Stefan Ballmer, associate professor of physics at Syracuse University, is an authority on gravitational-wave detector technology. He has logged thousands of hours at the LIGO Hanford Observatory in Richland, Washington putting together the Advanced LIGO interferometer. He was a member of Advanced LIGO’s design team and is now designing the next generation of gravitational-wave detectors. Rounding out his contributions to LIGO’s Nobel Prize-winning work have been an NSF CAREER Award at Syracuse, Visiting Associate Professor positions at the University of Tokyo, a Robert A. Millikan Fellowship at Caltech; and a postdoctoral fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, underwriting research at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. Ballmer earned a Ph.D. from MIT in the group Rai Weiss and a Master’s degree from ETH Zurich in Switzerland. In his spare time, he is also a pilot and flight instructor in the local Syracuse Flying Club, exploring the 3rd dimension here on earth.
TACNY Junior Cafe Scientifique
TACNY Junior Cafe Scientifique, a program for middle-school students founded in 2005, features discussions about topics in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics in an informal atmosphere and seeks to encourage students to consider careers in these areas. Students must be accompanied by an adult and can explore the MOST at no cost after the event.
Technology Alliance of Central New York
Founded in 1903 as the Technology Club of Syracuse, the nonprofit Technology Alliance of Central New York’s mission is to facilitate community awareness, appreciation, and education of technology; and to collaborate with like-minded organizations across Central New York.
For more information about TACNY, visit www.tacny.org.
