This award will provide travel support for attendees and invited speakers for the eighth annual symposium of the NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship (AAPF) program, to be held in Washington, D.C. on January 2-3, 2010. The purpose of the AAPF program is to integrate research and educational activities at the postdoctoral level, to better prepare the fellows for a scientific career. The Annual Symposium provides a venue for fellows to discuss their research and teaching or outreach projects while increasing their exposure within the astronomy and astrophysics community. The symposium represents a key component of the AAPF program, acting as a mechanism to facilitate knowledge transfer from experiences the fellows have obtained in the course of their activities to a broad audience.
As with the previous symposia in this series, the AAPF symposium for 2010 will promote discussion among astronomers with very different interests and backgrounds. By creating a forum in which discussions can occur across the standard boundaries defined by subdiscipline, there is great opportunity for new insights and the ability to develop new interdisciplinary collaborations. The symposium will also provide a venue for discussing other issues that are important to young astronomers as they begin their careers. In addition, the symposium will (1) provide a forum for discussing the combination of research and teaching, (2) facilitate collaborations between AAPF fellows on both research and education, and (3) provide exposure for the fellows and the fellowship program within the astronomical community, given that the symposium is held in conjunction with the winter American Astronomical Society meeting.
