The Westward Shift of Cosmic Variance

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The Westward Shift of Cosmic Variance

Risa at 3:31 am, May 19th, 2006

I’ve been so woefully remiss in my blogging duties the past several months that most of our dear readers probably aren’t sure that I exist. But there has been a good reason. As some of you know, I was the only member of Cosmic Variance without a faculty job. No longer!

I’m very happy to announce that sometime next fall I will be starting at faculty job at Stanford, affiliated with the couple-year-old Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. It’s a joint position between the Stanford Physics department and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, so although I’ll be losing Sean as a colleague, I’m looking forward to sharing a department with another co-blogger, JoAnne.

As I described a few months ago, the past six months or so of job-finding have been quite a whirlwind, and I decided that I needed to really focus on getting a job and deciding on the right one. So I not only stopped writing here, but also took a major break from reading blogs in general and from obsessing about the news. (Instead, for the past month or so I’ve been obsessing about the bay area housing market…)

I have to say that it paid off — I really couldn’t have hoped for things to go better this year, or to find a better job for me either professionally or personally. It’s been a great stint in the midwest (I was at the University of Michigan for two years before coming to Chicago), but I miss the bay area, the ocean, the reasonably-nearby mountains, the burritos and the farmer’s markets. And the job is very exciting — there’s lots of energy for cosmology at the new institute, several new hires planned, great postdocs and students, two brand new buildings, etc, etc… Plus of course, I’ll be joining an amazing physics department and a great lab, and my impression is that the joint position will really give me the best of both worlds.

It is rather too bad that Cosmic Variance will be losing its carefully-planned geographic diversity, and will soon be 80 percent Californian… but then again, Sean and I will both be trading wind and winter for ocean and sunshine, so it’s not really too bad for us.

Academia, Personal
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14 Comments on “The Westward Shift of Cosmic Variance” rss feed

Clifford on May 19th, 2006 at 3:57 am

CONGRATULATIONS!!! And welcome back to the West…!

-cvj
Mark on May 19th, 2006 at 6:40 am

Many congratulations Risa!
Belizean on May 19th, 2006 at 9:19 am

Congratulations, Risa!! Welcome back to California, the center of the universe.
Cynthia on May 19th, 2006 at 9:19 am

Congratulations and best wishes on your newly-found horizon… One question remains: Is your “westward shift” analogous to a “blue-ward shift” or a “red-ward shift” of the cosmic variance?
Sean on May 19th, 2006 at 9:53 am

Of course, you will be in the notoriously frivolous Northern sector of California, not the hard-working and intellectually rigorous Southland. But I’m sure you’ll make the best of it.
Brunsli on May 19th, 2006 at 10:54 am

Congratulations!!
Moshe on May 19th, 2006 at 11:01 am

Congratulations and welcome back (to CV).
Brad Holden on May 19th, 2006 at 12:53 pm

Congrats Risa. That place is turning into quite the department.
JoAnne on May 19th, 2006 at 2:01 pm

YES!! I’ve been waiting for this good news. Welcome to SLAC/Stanford! The CV team can now boast of a large dipole moment and the CV women understand that Northern California rocks.
Sean on May 19th, 2006 at 2:37 pm

We may have to send Mark to Europe, to keep the center of gravity in place.
citrine on May 19th, 2006 at 3:20 pm

Congratulations Risa!!

With all the travelling the CV bloggers do, geographic diversity (of experience) will be a given.
Aaron on May 20th, 2006 at 9:21 am

Now don’t y’all go to California at once, now! Us hefty, corn-fed Midwesterners are the only thing keeping this whole damn continent from tipping over!

p.s. Congrats!
IrrationalPoint on May 21st, 2006 at 5:20 pm

congrats.

–IP
Pingback from Many Happy Returns | Cosmic Variance on Oct 11th, 2006 at 5:02 pm

[...] (for me) … in particular, two, to CV and to CA, specifically my beloved bay area, where I’ve now been for about a month. Although this blog is now embarrasingly populated with Californians, at least we all still travel enough to keep it interesting. [...]

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