This week I went to Tucson for the workshop on "Observations of Dust in Nearby Galaxies - a workshop in memory of Chad Engelbracht" (link).
It was organized by Joannah Hinz. She's cool. She invited me to give talk! My first invited talk on dust in galaxies, a topic I've been working on since grad school! So. very. cool. For the longest time, I was scrambling to get the finances for the trip. Then Karl Gordon ok'ed to pay for my flight using our NHEMESES Herschel program's NASA funding! Wooo! I got to go!! Flying in just after Thanksgiving and I got back in time for Sinterklaas. Joannah even let me stay with her! Told you she's cool.
The reason we had the workshop as dust in nearby galaxies was the topic Chad Engelbracht was most interested in. He worked on the Spitzer Space Telescope and produced a lot of very good work with it. Almost everyone had a funny Chad story in their talk. Often involving Quake.
So this was the guy who got Tim Pickering so hooked on that game that he installed it on the UNIX system in Groningen...
I met Chad a few times and we worked on two SINGS papers together. Like most people at the workshop already said and I will reiterate: he was a kind and competent person. I remember him being encouraging on a paper that was slowly turning into a bit of a monster. I presented the results at a conference in Rome (where I met Joannah for the first time as well) and I used the "spherical cow" example. Someone used it as well at the workshop! I immediately wanted to find that talk and specifically that slide. It's not on my laptop. too many computers ago.
He was a kind person (well except in Quake) with a sucky disease. Chad will be missed.
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