self-calibration of stellar abundances

I spent the day at Vanderbilt, where I gave a talk and had many valuable conversations. Some were about data science: Andreas Berlind (Vanderbilt) is chairing a committee to propose a model for data science at Vanderbilt. We discussed the details that have been important at NYU.

One impressive project I learned about today was Hypatia, a compendium of all detailed stellar abundance measurements (and relevant housekeeping data) in the literature. Over dinner, Natalie Hinkel (Vanderbilt) and I discussed the possibility that this catalog could be used for some kind of self-calibration of all abundance measurements. That's an interesting idea, and connects to things I have discussed over the years with Andy Casey (Monash).