Special Interest Groups

A number of special interest groups have sprung up in the ICC and CEA to encourage collaboration and the sharing of ideas and information. They vary from journal club discussion groups, to meetings that discuss ideas for new projects and papers. Please go along to any that interest you. Some information on where and when they are held and perhaps who to contact can be found in the following table.

Group	Aim	Organiser	Meeting Times	Location
GALFORM	For GALFORM users to meet to discuss projects and code development	Cedric Lacey	Meets irregularly	OCW226, or as announced
Lensing Lunches	An informal get together to talk about gravitational lensing (with sandwiches). There may be talks and paper discussions, updates about what we're working on, advice about tricky research problems, etc.	Richard Massey David Lagattuta	1pm every other Thursday (alternates with Small Scale Structure)	OCW226 and on Zoom
Small Scale Structure (and Galaxies) group	Disusses a variated of topics e.g. dwarf galaxies, dark matter, cosmological simulation, galaxy formation, the Milky Way, the Local Universe, near-field cosmology.	Isabel Santos The mailing list icc-ssss@durham.ac.uk is used for announcements - interested people can be added upon request.	Thursday 1pm every two weeks (alternates with Lensing Lunches).	OCW226 and on Zoom
Cookie Student Journal Club	A forum for PhD and Masters students to discuss papers of interest, gain knowledge of fields outside their own, and practise presenting papers to a group of peers. Meetings are informal and well-supplied with biscuits!	James Petley Martina Veresvarska	11am every Wednesday (email either organiser to be added to the mailing list)
AGN/Accretion Journal Club	We discuss up to two papers every session dealing with the broad topic of accretion physics, black holes, AGN, and their co-evolution with galaxies. A paper is presented by a pre-assigned attendee, but we encourage open discussion around the table.	Carolina Andonie Scott Hagen	1pm every alternate Wednesday. The meeting is open to all, advertisements and reminders are sent to ph-astronomy-all. Interested presenters are encouraged to get in touch with the organisers.	OCW107 - also on Zoom
Accretion Alliance	Focused discussion forum between Durham and Newcastle researchers on accretion-related topics. We aim to keep the format and research focus as flexible as possible. So each meeting has a different host who decides on the topic and the meeting format. Anything accretion related is viable for discussion, be it on-going studies (own or others), encountered problems and issues (own research or others), and new ideas for research.	David Alexander Chris Harrison (Newcastle)	1pm Wednesday every 4 weeks (interleaving with AGN/accretion journal club). The meeting is open to all, advertisements and reminders are sent to ph-astronomy-all in Durham and to staff members at Newcastle. For previous meetings and upcoming meetings see this Google Doc.	Currently on Zoom. Once a year will meet up in person alternating between Durham and Newcastle.
DESI	Regular meeting to keep DESI interested folks up-to-date with DESI related activities in Durham. E-mail the organiser to propose topics for the agenda. Agenda advertised using ph-astronomyall mailing list.	Dakshesh Kololgi	12 noon on the penultimate Monday each month.	OCW116 and on Zoom
4MOST	Monthly meeting for all people involved with or interested in 4MOST activities. E-mail the organiser to propose topics for the agenda.	Alice Eltvedt	1pm Thursday every four weeks	OCW117 and on Zoom
IFU Club	Monthly meeting for all of those in CEA/CfAI/ICC who are working with, wanting to work with, developing, or just interested in general in integral field instruments. We talk about existing, new, and upcoming IFUs, share analysis tools/techniques, and discuss new interesting papers.	Ariadna Calcines Adriano Poci Dimitri Gadotti	10am, first Wednesday of the month	Currently on Zoom