A Kiwi Lab Reunion Over High Tea

Over spring break, I traveled to New Zealand for one of my favorite conference series - Extreme Solar Systems. Having recently achieved tenure and honestly feeling a bit burnt out, I did a thing I’ve never done before, which is attend a conference just to learn about cool stuff that other people are doing, rather than presenting my own work. Honestly, it was really nice and, aside from a few sessions where jet lag won out over my desire to learn and I may have closed my eyes for a moment or two in the big dark auditorium, I got a lot out of it!

As an added bonus, I got to catch up with lab alums Dr. Sarah Betti and William Balmer ‘21 over one of my favorite extravagances - high tea! Unsurprisingly, they are both killing it in their new positions and doing all kinds of cool science. It’s such a privilege to get a front row seat as brilliant young scientists come into their own, and these two are some of the most prolific and brilliant I’ve worked with.