A year at the South Pole

Farmlab
1745 North Spring Street, Unit 4
Los Angeles, CA 90012
1.323.226-1158

Friday, February 5, 2010, Noon

Metabolic Studio Public Salon
Simon Balm

A Year at the South Pole

Simon Balm will describe his experiences during a year spent at the South Pole conducting astronomical research in one of the coldest and extreme environments on Earth.

A native of London, England, Simon Balm received his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from the University of Durham in 1988 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the University of Sussex in 1992, working with Nobel Prize winning chemist Sir Harold Kroto. After graduate school he spent two years as a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow in the UCLA Astronomy Department followed by four years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA where he helped to design, build and install a radio telescope at the geographical South Pole. After several Summer visits to the Antarctic he wintered-over with the telescope at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station during the 1995-1996 season as a scientist with United States Antarctic Program.

[text and graphic from Farmlab website. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]