The student reps of our department (codename: redshift) have organized a stellar event today. Curiosity and interest in the LISA space mission brought them to design a full day of talks from leading experts in the field. They put Stefano Vitale, Alessandra Buonanno, and Bernard Schutz in the same room with the (astro)physics students and, well, a few of us who tagged along. The result was an amazing rollercoaster called “LISA and beyond” across the wonders of the experimental design by Stefano (is this truly going to work?!?), some amazing order-of-magnitude calculations that Bernard pulled off (wish I could do that!), and a broad vision by Alessandra across the discoveries we had and those we will soon be seeing (can’t wait, can’t wait!). Our students engaged with the speakers, asked questions, and organized a round table touching topics like the carbon footprint of space missions, gender equality, and how to manage a research group. Such ingenuity and enthusiasm are what keeps science alive! We should learn from our students and do science like that.
