Fellows On the Frontier 2015; September - 4, 2015; Evanston, IL

This proposal requests NSF funding to support women and under-represented minority postdocs as invited speakers to the 2nd “Future of Astronomy” conference, to be held in Evanston Illinois in early September 2015. The PI will be the main organizer of the conference, assisted by Faculty and Postdoctoral Fellows from Northwestern’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA), and informed by input from the nationwide astronomical community. The first conference in this series, the “Future of Astronomy: Fellows at the Frontiers of Science” meeting, also organized by CIERA, has already shown this to be a valuable forum, as we explain in more detail in the proposal. That meeting took place from August 31st through September 3rd, 2011, featuring 43 top postdoctoral researchers coming together for the first time, allowing them not only a glimpse at a wide range of research, but also enabling networking opportunities for a new generation of astronomers. In the course of that meeting, the organizers heard repeatedly from attendees that the meeting was an excellent venue to hear about a wide variety of work in astronomy, and that such a meeting should be held again; the organizers also received positive feedback from non-presenting faculty who had attended the meeting simply to see so many young researchers in astrophysics, together in one place. For this second meeting, four years later, our goal is to provide the same opportunity for the current group of “Fellows at the Frontier”: overall, we would again host the top postdoctoral fellows in astronomy, who would have all of their expenses paid to enable them to attend. With this proposal, we ask for funding for female and under-represented minority postdoctoral fellows to participate in this meeting, by attending and giving invited talks. We will secure other sources of funding for the remaining speakers.