COSMIC MAPS Talk Series with Dr. Raja GuhaThakurta

836M is excited to partner with The David Rumsey Map Center and Stanford Libraries on Cosmic Maps, an exhibition that transports visitors to outer space. It showcases a curated selection of print and digital maps from the collection spanning modernity to the present day.

In line with 836M’s 2024 theme “Beyond Frontiers,” which spotlights artists and thinkers whose work transcends physical, cultural, intellectual, or disciplinary boundaries to produce new ideas and experiences, this exhibition is accompanied by a talk series featuring distinguished guest speakers, covering topics ranging from “galactic cannibalism” to interpreting the history of the cosmos through dance.

Among the speakers are Dr. Gregory Mack, a science program officer focusing on astrophysics at The Kavli Foundation, Dr. Bruce McIntosh, the Director of the University of California Observatories, Dr. Natalie Batalha, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, and Dr. Raja GuhaThakurta, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Speaker Schedule

Thursday, June 20, 6:30-8:30 pm - Talk at 836M with Dr. Gregory Mack
Thursday, June 27, 6:30-8:30 pm - Talk at 836M with Dr. Bruce McIntosh & Dr. Natalie Batalha
Thursday, July 11, 6:30-8:30 pm - Talk at 836M with Dr. Raja GuhaThakurta

Image: Moon LRO LROC WAC Global Morphology Mosaic 100m v3, 2013 by Arizona State University LROC Team. Courtesy of The David Rumsey Map Center at the Stanford Libraries.

Dr. Raja GuhaThakurta is a Distinguished Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California Santa Cruz. He studies the formation and evolution of galaxies large and small, with a focus on the assembly of their dark matter, dynamics of their resolved stellar population, merger history, chemical enrichment, and star formation history. He makes extensive use of the Hubble Space Telescope and Keck telescopes in his research. At the present time, he has over 800 publications (scientific journal articles, conference papers/abstracts, astronomical bulletins, etc).

He is the founder and faculty director of the successful Science Internship Program (SIP), in which high school students are mentored by UCSC researchers and work on cutting-edge STEAM research projects. He also founded two other educational initiatives: (1) StS (Shadow the Scientists), which allows students and educators to eavesdrop via Zoom on scientists while they conduct research, and (2) PyaR (Python and Research), an online computer programming tutorial set in the context of astronomy research. These programs are under the CrEST (Creating Equity in STEAM) umbrella that he started at UCSC.

GuhaThakurta has been appointed a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China from 2022–2025, American Astronomical Society Fellow in 2021, Outstanding Faculty in UCSC’s Physical and Biological Sciences Division in 2020–2021, Raymond and Beverly Sackler Distinguished Lecturer at Tel-Aviv University in 2018, and visiting faculty at Google in 2015.

He was awarded the National Research Council of Canada’s Herzberg Memorial Prize and Fellowship in 2001, and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in 1997. He received his Ph.D. in Astrophysical Sciences from Princeton University in 1989 and his B.Sc. in Physics from St. Xavier’s College in Kolkata, India in 1983.

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