Outreach

I was the lead organizer of SMU’s viewing event for the April 2024 total solar eclipse, which drew thousands of spectators, with lead-up talks, demonstrations, and public engagement involving students and postdocs. The event grew into regular public astronomical viewing nights with the SMU Society of Physics Students, with telescopes operated by graduate students.

Composite of the April 2024 eclipse seen from SMU: the partial phases on either side of totality, with the solar corona — The eclipse from SMU, April 8, 2024 (composite: Guillermo G. Vasquez and Thomas E. Coan)

A large crowd on the SMU campus watching the eclipse — The crowd on campus during the eclipse

Students and visitors with telescopes on a lawn at night, in front of a campus building lit in red — Public viewing night, October 2026

A telescope set up at night on campus, with people gathered around — Public viewing night, February 2026

Public talks

The Night Gatherers, Herd Here family chamber music program on music and the cosmos, Trinity River Audubon Center, Dallas, December 2025
A Solar Sojourn: Understanding the April 8 Eclipse, SMU webinar with Fred Olness, moderated by Thomas DiPiero, Dean of Dedman College, March 2024 (highlights)

Podcasts and video

The cosmological preference for negative neutrino mass, video, Research at SMU, February 2025
Cosmological Connections, STEAMology podcast (Highland Park ISD), episode 15, September 2024
Hundreds of thousands of travelers head to Texas to see the solar eclipse, WFMY News 2 (CBS), April 2024 (interview)
Explaining Eclipses, STEAMology podcast (Highland Park ISD), episode 2, February 2024

In the news

Earth’s Gravity Could Undergo a Bizarre Change, According to This Wild Theory, Popular Mechanics, February 2026 (interview)
What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: Is Gravity Ending?, Lifehacker, January 2026 (interview)
New physics needed? Maybe, SMU News, September 2024 (the cosmological preference for negative neutrino mass)
Total eclipse rooted in rich history, SMU Daily Campus, April 2024
What’s the significance of the eclipse?, SMU Daily Campus, April 2024