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Under the leadership of Associate Professor Jorge Moreno and Post-Doctoral Research Fellow Francisco Mercado, the ɫ��ɫ Department of Physics and Astronomy is administering a $50,000 conference grant from the National Science Foundation. It will support the 23rd annual symposium of the NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellows. The two-day event, held annually before the winter American Astronomical Society conference, will take place January 11-12 in National Harbor, Maryland.

“I believe this is the first time a baccalaureate institution has taken this role,” says Dean R. Gerstein, Pomona’s director of sponsored research. “The most recent hosting institutions for this event were the University of Colorado-Boulder, the University of Texas-Austin, Arizona State University and Johns Hopkins University.”

Mercado, now in the second year of a three-year NSF post-doctoral research fellowship, is leading a group of six post-docs from throughout the country in planning the event. It is open to all current NSF post-doc research fellows. “This is run by post-docs for post-docs,” says Mercado. The purpose is to provide a forum where participants can share updates on their research, network among their peers and learn how to advance in scientific careers.

Mercado says that this year’s symposium will include a workshop to help participants learn how to tell science stories for a wide range of audiences. “We’re also planning to have training on how to manage the academic job market,” he notes. “We’re bringing both faculty and past NSF fellows to answer questions about best practices for the job search and [share] what interviews are like.” Since not all post-docs go into teaching, the planning committee will also include speakers offering guidance for those aiming for a career in industry.

One of the keynote talks Mercado is most looking forward to will focus on the new era of big data in astronomy, a particularly significant topic for astronomers who are eagerly awaiting the imminent opening of the in Chile. “It’s going to be doing one of the deepest scans of the night sky in the southern hemisphere,” says Moreno. “There are galaxies out there that, with our current telescopes, we cannot see. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will help us observe and discover new galaxies around the Milky Way.”

When the Chilean telescope becomes operational, it will generate huge amounts of data—“petabytes of data—it’s very, very intense,” says Moreno. “It’s actually pushing the field of computer science.”

Mercado came to Pomona in 2023 as the first post-doctoral research fellow in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. In collaboration with Moreno, his research deals with dark matter and galaxies. He also taught Astronomy 2 in the spring of 2024. Applying for and helping to manage the NSF symposium grant provides an opportunity to learn about grant funding. “This is something that many faculty do,” he says, “so it’s nice to get a taste of what that is like.”

Moreno and Gerstein both emphasize the value of having post-doctoral research fellows at Pomona. “Francisco has impacted our astronomy students in multiple ways—through direct supervision and as a resource to the wider community,” says Moreno, “including colloquia, outreach events and participation in discussions in our upper-level astronomy curriculum.” He notes that in a recent course on extragalactic astronomy, “the most salient feedback I received was to keep inviting Francisco,” he says. The course reading includes recent peer-reviewed papers, and, Moreno says, “Francisco’s input has definitely helped assuage students’ apprehension as they transition from pupils to researchers.”