Talks

The Art of Visualization

Presentation Date: Wednesday, May 20, 2026 Location: Online for the Eleventh Parker Heliophysics Scholars Meeting In this talk, I’ll discuss the value and practice of data visualization. The best visualizations are clear and deep at the same time—and in...

Beyond the Telescope: How Stars Shape Galaxies

Presentation Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 - 7:00 - 8:00PM. Location: Charles Hayden Planetarium. Museum of Science, Boston. Join astrophysicists Dr. Scott Lucchini and Dr. Alyssa Goodman on an expedition through the lives of stars and how they shape their...

Way, Way Out There?

Presentation Date: February 2026. Location: Renaissance Weekend in Amelia Island, FL. A talk given at Renaissance Weekend in Amelia Island, FL in February 2026. Files included on Alyssa Goodman's Dataverse are Keynote slides (in .key and .pdf formats).

Exploratory Data Analysis: What is it, and why does it matter in the age of big surveys and AI?

Presentation Date: Friday, February 6, 2026. Location: Harvard College Observatory. A talk given to students at the Student and Faculty Forum at the Harvard College Observatory on Friday, February 6, 2026. Files included on Alyssa Goodman's Dataverse are...

The Prediction Project (Renaissance Weekend 2026)

Presentation Date: February 2026. Location: Renaissance Weekend in Amelia Island, FL. A talk given at Renaissance Weekend in Amelia Island, FL in February 2026. Files included on Alyssa Goodman's Dataverse are Keynote slides (in .key and .pdf formats).

How Mesopotamian Sheep Entrails, Stars forming in the Milky Way, and Climate Change are Related

December 12, 2025 | This talk will offer a quick overview of how my combined interests in art, physics, and history have led to a research agenda that spans astrophysics, exploratory data analysis, the history of prediction, climate change, science...

Once Around the Milky Way

Presentation Date: Thursday, November 13, 2025. Location: Steward/NOIRLab Colloquium in Tucson, AZ. The Sun orbits the Milky Way’s center about every 230 million years. As it travels, it also bobs up and down through the Galaxy’s gravitational mid-plane...

Once Around the Milky Way: Building out a 3D model of the Milky Way that will offer a tour

Presentation Date: October 2025. Location: Munich, Germany. The Sun orbits the Milky Way’s center about every 230 million years. As it travels, it also bobs up and down through the Galaxy’s gravitational mid-plane roughly every 30 million years. During...

CosmicDS: Digital Interfaces for Scientific Research

Presentation Date: August 22, 2025 Location: Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA CosmicDS: Digital Interfaces for Scientific Research A short introduction to CosmicDS and the TEMPO data story, at the TEMPO team meeting in Cambridge, MA. Files included...

How do young stars leave home? And why might that matter?

Presentation Date: May 6, 2025 Location: Ringberg Castle, Kreuth, Bavaria, Germany A short presentation at " Puzzles of Star Formation, 2 " highlighting the challenge of modeling the "spacetime" path of a star just after it forms, and why knowing such...

Seeing the Milky Way in 3D (CIERA Colloquium)

Presentation Date: April 7, 2025 Location: CIERA Colloquium at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL Over just the past five years, 3D dust mapping, largely enabled by Gaia, has revealed fully unexpected new phenomena, like " The Radcliffe Wave"...

AI in my Astro+Visualization Life Today (SkAI Colloquium)

Presentation Date: Friday, April 4, 2025 Location: Chicago, IL I have been lucky enough in my career so far to watch, and I hope help, computational technology change what we can learn about our Universe. Today, in 2025, I somewhat unexpectedly find...