We recommend speakers to present their own work. Each talk is usually 60 minutes long including discussion. The colloquium is held fully in English but we allow one exception for student talks by master course students (see below). We mainly have two types of talks: guest talks and student talks.
Guest talk
We invite active researchers working on astronomy or relevant fields as a guest speaker. The colloquium organizers internally ask a recommendation of guest speakers twice a year. The organizers select the guest speakers on the basis of the balance such as fields, theory or observation, etc.
Student talk
We also have talks by students who belong to Division of Science. Our group constantly have around ten students in master and Ph.D. courses. The motivation of having student talks is to make an opportunity for students to share what they are currently working on with other members of the Division of Science. We hope that it would initiate active discussion between students and postdoc/staff members and that students eventually obtain more advices on their research/presentations/carrier by other members. To achieve this, we kindly ask active participation of all members of Division of Science.
We recommend students to well prepare the talks. Following tips may help improving presentations.
- Suppose that audience are not familiar with your fields. You need to start from kind introduction to the fields, and then explain what is the current understanding, what is one of the biggest questions in your fields, and how you are contributing to the problems.
- However, focus on your own work. Do not make a review talk of your fields. Emphasizing what is your original idea or what are your unique techniques among other research may improve the presentation.
- Briefly explaining the methodology may also be good because there may be experts in the audience, who may give you good advice.
Language
We basically have the colloquium fully in English. However, we allow only one exception: master course students can choose Japanese if they request. We apologize inconvenience for non-Japanese speakers but the situation is as follows.
The undergrad university education in Japan is usually held in Japanese. Instead, researchers of the postdoc level or above are requested to read and write papers in English and to have presentations and discussions at seminars/conferences in English. We need to help the master/Ph.D. students to achieve that level through their experiences in our group. However, requesting both English and research presentations to new students is sometimes too much. We would like to avoid situations that students cannot present their work because of the language barrier. To avoid that situation and to achieve the original motivation for sharing the students’ current work with other members, we would like to allow master course students to have a colloquium in Japanese if they request (of course, we encourage students to have talks in English if possible).
Updates for talks by internal members.
We have discussed the organization of the colloquium at the Renrakukai on February 3, 2020. The summary is as follows.
- Student talks of master course students
- Every master’s student has a talk opportunity during the entire master’s course period. The recommended dates are between the end of M1 and mid of M2.
- Student talks of Ph.D. course students
- Each student has a talk every year. While UTokyo students don’t have many talk opportunities at other seminars, SOKENDAI students may have too many talks. We should keep watching the situation.
- New postdocs
- New postdoc members have a talking opportunity.
- Other postdocs
- If a postdoc member wants to have a talk, we should give them a talk opportunity. Please raise your hand at the call for speakers.
- New Faculty members
- We recommend they talk at the NAOJ seminar.
We also note that talks by internal members are encouraged on January through March because university staff are busy at that season, which makes it difficult calling guest speakers.
As of February 3, 2020, colloquium organizers 2019