X-ray School Presentations
In 2001 I co-founded the US X-ray astronomy school, a series of workshops which have been held on an as-needed basis through 2011; since then the community has seemed to be sufficiently familiar with Chandra and XMM-Newton that the need was lower; it is possible they will restart with the launch of Hitomi. These were intended for graduate students and postdocs as an introduction to the practical side of X-ray astronomy. The first schools comprised only lectures but when laptops became widely used we expanded to include time for attendees to work on their own data analysis tasks. These schools have been held in 2011, 2007, 2005, 2003, 2002 and 2001. An outgrowth of these schools has been the Handbook of X-ray Astronomy, written by some of the lecturers.
Also in 2001, I was one of lecturers at the first COSPAR Capacity Building Workshop. These workshops are designed to build expertise in space-based science in countries and regions which may not currently have active programs. The first workshops covered X-ray astronomy but have since expanded to planetary and Earth sciences. As a lecturer at COSPAR workshops, I have taught at X-ray Astronomy schools in Brazil, India, South Africa, Egypt, and Argentina.
Since 2010, I have also been the chair of the fellowship program associated with these COSPAR workshops.
