Comments and anecdotes about the event:
Bruce Ruggeri introduced the evening’s speaker Dr. Joel Leja. Dr. Leja is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State Uni-versity. He is a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher, a recipient of Yale’s Brouwer Prize and an Endowed Chair at Penn State. His studies focus on modeling observations of distant galaxies and astrophysical computing. His presentation topic was “Surprises at the Dawn of Time from James Webb: A First Look at the First Stars, Galaxies and Black Holes.” He discussed some of the early and surprising discoveries made by Webb’s first deep field observations.