About LunGradCon

The 12^th annual Lunar and Small Bodies Graduate Forum (LunGradCon 2021) will be held virtually on July 15^th and 16^th, 2021, with a pre-conference social event the evening of July 14^th. This is the week preceding the 2021 NASA Exploration Science Forum and European Lunar Symposium (ESF), which will also be held virtually. We encourage all attendees to also register for the ESF.

Following the broad interests of the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI), the scope of LunGradCon includes both lunar and small body science. LunGradCon provides an opportunity for grad students and early-career postdocs to present their research on lunar and small body science in a low-stress, friendly environment, being critiqued only by their student and recent graduate peers. In addition to pre-recorded oral presentations, the forum presents opportunities for professional development and networking with fellow grad students and postdocs, as well as senior members of SSERVI.

LunGradCon will address the following research topics of the NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute:

Dust/Regolith and Plasma
Geology and Geophysics
Volatiles/Exospheres
Missions and Human Exploration

Registration

If you are interested in attending or presenting at LunGradCon 2021 please fill out the registration form. Registration will be open until the last day of the conference.

Conference Format

Talks for the conference will be posted to youtube and made available to conference attendees by July 1st. Each talk will be roughly 15 minutes in length and uploaded to personal youtube accounts. We encourage presenters to make use of youtube's speech recognition to create transcripts for their videos.

The live conference will take place on July 15th and 16th. Each day will feature three sessions of 4-6 speakers each. Each speaker will have 3 minutes to give a quick overview of their talk (think of this as an advertisement for anyone who hasn't yet watched your presentation), followed by two minutes of questions from the audience.

After each speaker is done, the session chairs will open the floor to questions from the audience about any of the topics in the session, and general discussion will be encouraged.

Each day will also have a panel discussion, with one being a group from NASA SSERVI leadership, including Greg Schmidt, the SSERVI director. The other will be a panel of early-career scientists in lunar and small body science.

The first day will also feature an icebreaker round, where all participants (including those not giving presentations) will briefly introduce themselves with a slide that they have prepared. More info on this will be out soon.

Following the conference each day, there will be social events hosted in gather.town. One of the primary benefits of LunGradCon is being able to meet and network with your colleagues who you'll be studying the solar system with over the coming decades, and the social events are the best ways to do this. The gather.town maps will have various tables for small or large group discussions, whiteboards, and of course games.

On July 14th, the evening before the conference, there will also be a purely social 'pre-conference dinner' on gather.town.

Abstracts

Abstracts are no longer being accepted for LGC 2021.

Previous forums

The 1st annual LunGradCon 2010 was held on Sunday, July 18, 2010 at the NASA Ames Research Center.

The 2nd annual LunGradCon 2011 was held on Sunday, July 17, 2011 at the NASA Ames Research Center.

The 3rd annual LunGradCon 2012 was held on Sunday, July 15, 2012 at the NASA Ames Research Center.

The 4th annual LunGradCon 2013 was held on Wednesday, July 10, 2013 virtually.

The 5th annual LunGradCon 2014 was held on Sunday, July 20, 2014 at the NASA Ames Research Center.

The 6th annual LunGradCon 2015 was held on Monday, July 20, 2015 at the NASA Ames Research Center.

The 7th annual LunGradCon 2016 was held on Tuesday, July 19, 2016 at the NASA Ames Research Center.

The 8th annual LunGradCon 2017 was held on Monday, July 17, 2017 at the NASA Ames Research Center.

The 9th annual LunGradCon 2018 was held on Monday, June 25, 2018 at the NASA Ames Research Center.

The 10th annual LunGradCon 2019 was held on Monday, July 22, 2019 at the NASA Ames Research Center.

The 11th annual LunGradCon 2020 was held on Wednesday, July 1 and Thursday July 2, 2020 virtually.

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