Changes

Hi again! It has been almost six months since I last posted at Cosmic Variance, which most certainly marks me as highly neglectful. I wasn’t intending to take such a break. In fact I had hoped that a byproduct of my new commitment to travel less would be more consistent blogging. However, as it turns out it has been a rather stressful few months, and only now do I feel that I can make an attempt to once again write somewhat regularly. The primary source of my stress is something about which I can’t really complain; I have been making an important career decision. This has now come to an end and, after being on leave in the Astronomy Department at Cornell next semester, I will be leaving Syracuse in January to become a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania. I have had a wonderful eight years at Syracuse, in a supportive department and university and with wonderful colleagues and students. These factors, and the deep friendships I have within the department, made this a very difficult decision to make. However, now that I have made my decision I am obviously extremely excited about my new position and am looking forward to my future at Penn. There will be plenty to write about this in the coming months (including at least one more surprise), but I wanted to use this post merely to explain my absence and hopefully to get back into the swing of writing.