John Craven, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Portsmouth, has received a CBE in the Queen’s honours for his services to higher education and the City of Portsmouth. John is a long-time supporter of the ICG and we are part of his legacy as he heads for retirement this Summer. We wish him well.
Year 9 student spends half-term at the ICG as a learner scientist
Benjamin Taylor, a year-9 student at Chichester high school for boys, was on placement at the ICG the whole half-term week and was very busy with several different projects. He learnt about Galaxy Zoo, he visited the Sciama supercomputer (see picture, with PhD students David Wilkinson and Claire Le Cras), he discussed science and started to read professional articles. Finally, he was engaged in creating a power point presentation where he listed all questions a young student has on Cosmology and Astrophysics. He was assisted by PhD student David Wilkinson and Dr. Claudia Maraston (see picture on the balcony of the ICG, also with prof. David Wands, Head of Department, Claudia Maraston and Claire Le Cras). Ben professed his intention to become a space scientist and we bet on him!
PhD Studentships at the ICG for 2013
The Institute of Cosmology & Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth is one of the leading cosmology groups in the UK. We are a member of the Dark Energy Survey (DES), the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III), COSMOS (the UK cosmology supercomputer consortium), and SEPnet (South-East Physics Network) Astrophysics.
PhD studentships starting in 2013 will be available for research in:
- Observational Cosmology
- Dark Energy and Modified Gravity Theory
- The Early Universe
- Galaxy Evolution
- Structure Formation
Applications should reach us by 20th February 2013, but will be considered until the positions are filled.
PhD applicants should have or expect to obtain a good honours degree or equivalent in Physics, Maths or Astronomy. Applicants should send a CV and a brief statement of research interests, and arrange for up to 2 letters of recommendation to be emailed directly to icg-admin@port.ac.uk, or posted to:
Research Administrator
Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation
Dennis Sciama Building?
Burnaby Road?
Portsmouth PO1 3FX
UK
Research Development Funding Award of the University of Portsmouth to ICG researcher
Claudia Maraston of the ICG has been awarded an RDF Grant of the University of Portsmouth as PI of a project entitled ‘‘Establishing leading roles in the major space science projects of the next decade: the Extremely Large Telescope and EUCLID”.
ICG Member Organises Specialist Discussion at the Royal Astronomical Society
ICG Research Fellow, Dr. Karen Masters has been involved in the organisation of a Specialist Discussion on the topic of “Morphology in the Era of Large Surveys” to be hosted by the Royal Astronomical Society tomorrow (Friday 10th May) in London.
Dr. Masters will also speak at the event, along with ICG PhD student Tom Melvin, and former ICG postdoc Dr. Steven Bamford (now at Nottingham University). All three will talk about their research using galaxy morphologies from a variety of large survey data, either as provided by citizen scientists through the Galaxy Zoo project, or by using automated methods.
ICG researcher talks at the British Astronomical Society
Claudia Maraston gave a talk on Saturday, 27 at a meeting of the British Astronomical Society, http://britastro.org/baa/, held at the South Downs Planetarium in Chichester. The meeting hosted 100 attendees spanning a range of professional figures, with a common interest in Astronomy. Maraston explained basics concepts of galaxy evolution and the state-of-art in galaxy studies at ICG.
2013 ICG/SEPNet Student Outreach Award
The 2013 ICG/SEPnet Postgraduate Student Outreach Award has been awarded to Timothy Clemson, for significant effort in outreach activities during his time at ICG, especially for activities with the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Branch of the British Science Association.
EPSRC Grant to Study the Economics of Crowd-Sourcing
A team led by Dr. Joe Cox of the Portsmouth Business School, and including Dr. Karen Masters from the ICG as well as researchers from Oxford, Manchester and Leeds Universities, has won £750,000 from EPSRC to establish why people give up their time to help scientists with projects like Galaxy Zoo
The group will collaborate to study the reasons why people give up their time to help with projects in the Zooniverse, a collection of citizen science projects which was inspired by the success of Galaxy Zoo. ICG members have been involved in Galaxy Zoo from it’s launch in 2007 and in particular, a large fraction of the science results from Galaxy Zoo classifications have been led by scientists at ICG.
For more details see this News Item on the University Website.
Professor Will Percival’s inaugural lecture
ICG’s Professor Will Percival gave his inaugural lecture last week. He spoke about his work mapping the Universe using galaxy surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, as well as discussing if it would be possible to travel to these distant galaxies in the time that he has been a professional astronomer. A longer write-up is available on the University of Portsmouth website, and a video of the lecture is on vimeo.
Professor Will Percival’s inaugural lecture: using a motorbike to explain Doppler shift.
Successful stargazing at Gunwharf Quays
ICG astronomers held a successful Astronomy in the City event at Gunwharf Quays last night as part of National Science and Engineering Week. About 60 passers-by were able to spot the Moon and Jupiter through gaps in the clouds using a variety of different telescopes, with the help of Emma Beynon, Edd Edmondson, Jen Gupta, Cullan Howlett, Karen Masters, Andreas Papadoupoulos and David Wilkinson. The event was also a chance to test out the ICG’s new Skywatcher Skyhawk 1145P outreach telescope.
Astronomy in the City March 2013 (Credit: Andreas Papadopoulos)
Astronomy in the City is a free event and is scheduled to take place each night until Friday this week, 6.30-8pm at the Gunwharf Quays plaza. However the event is obviously weather-dependent and the forecast does not look good for the remaining evenings. Keep an eye on the ICG website, facebook page and twitter feed which will all be updated if the event goes ahead. Astronomy in the City is part of the University of Portsmouth’s free events programme for National Science and Engineering Week, details of which can be found on the university website at http://www.port.ac.uk/aboutus/newsandevents/events/title,171270,en.html