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NAM Plenarius

Posted in Biographical, Cardiff, Harassment Bullying etc with tags , , , on July 5, 2023 by telescoper
Picture by Renée Hložek

Today I contributed to a Plenary session at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Cardiff, in the form of a a joint presentation by myself and the wonderful Dr Tana Joseph. It isn’t the first time that there’s been a talk about Equality Diversity and Inclusion at a NAM – there was one in 2017 – but it’s definitely the first one I have done. I wasn’t sure how it would go, but in the end I think it went pretty well.

The word “Plenary”, by the way, is derived from the Latin adjective plenarius (meaning complete) which is in turn derived from plenus (meaning full). I wasn’t sure ahead of the event how full the room would be, as I worried that some people wouldn’t attend this and might leave after the previous plenary talk. Some people did leave at the start, actually, but fortunately they were replaced by a a larger number of new arrivals.

There have been parallel sessions yesterday and the day before on EDI issues, but there’s a tendency for the people attending such sessions to those who are already engaged in related work, while it is important in my opinion for everyone to pay attention. That’s a point I tried to make during the session.

Tana and I agreed beforehand that we would try to stimulate a discussion and I did worry that we might not succeed in provoking questions, but in fact there were many. That, and the nice comments we got after the talk, convinced me that the session had gone well. I was, however, quite nervous as I haven’t given any kind of conference talk for some years now.

One problem was that a meeting of RAS Council was timetabled in such a way as to clash with this morning’s Plenary, so nobody on Council could attend. That was regrettable.

Anyway, that job done, I’m now back at my hotel getting myself ready for the conference dinner. That reminds me that last night I attended the out-of-town dinner of the RAS Club which is usually held at National Astronomy Meetings. This time it was at the Ivy Restaurant in Cardiff. I took my chequebook to pay for the dinner (which is practically the only thing I pay for by cheque) only to discover that they now accept card payments. Looking at the stubs, though, I realized that the last Club Dinner I attended at the Athenaeum in London was on 14th February 2020. The dinner after that was cancelled due to the pandemic, and I haven’t been able to attend any since then.

Update: dinner (in the Principality Stadium) was really excellent, and congratulations to all the award winners. And so to bed.

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To Cardiff

Posted in Biographical, Cardiff, The Universe and Stuff on July 2, 2023 by telescoper
Cardiff Castle

So I’m here in sunny Cardiff for the UK National Astronomy Meeting which is taking place here from tomorrow 3rd July until Friday 7th July. I’m here all week!

On my way here this morning, in Dublin Airport, I picked up a copy of the Sunday Times Ireland edition to find this:

Sunday Times Ireland 2/7/2023.

It’s not a bad piece except I’m uncomfortable about being in the same subheading as Elon Musk! More amusingly still, my piece is next to a story about how your sex life needn’t stop when you reach 50. I wish someone had told me that 10 years ago!

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Pushing Euclid

Posted in Biographical, Euclid, Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on June 30, 2023 by telescoper

I’ve spent a sizeable chunk of the last two days answering press enquiries concerning the Euclid mission, due to be launch about 24 hours from now. Here is a picture of Euclid in the Falcon 9 fairing, getting ready to be moved to the launch facility. It’s all getting very real!

After talking with their researcher yesterday, this morning I did a short interview on Morning Ireland, which is on RTÉ Radio 1. It was shorter than I imagined because the previous item – about the ongoing ructions at RTÉ over various financial scandals – understandably overran quite a bit. The presenter, Rachel English, was very nice though and I think it went fairly well. I did another short interview on Newstalk Radio on a programme called Hard Shoulder, which took place at 5.48pm. I also spoke to a journalist from the Sunday Times Irish Edition, who I think will run a story on Sunday.

Anyway, the purpose of this media stuff is not to try to grab headlines – my involvement in Euclid is very small, really – but to generate some interest in the hope that Ireland takes a more active role in future space missions. I don’t know whether it will work, but I hope it does, and I feel obliged to try although it has made for a very busy day indeed!

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Back to Maynooth; a Look Ahead

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth on June 26, 2023 by telescoper
A pensive Maynooth University Library Cat

I’m back on Maynooth University campus after a very busy but enjoyable week in Copenhagen. I spent the morning catching up on a few things, including a bit of OJAp business and a visit to Maynooth University Library Cat.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) I have to Chair a PhD viva (for a candidate in another Department). It’s interesting that viva voce examinations at Maynooth follow a similar practice to those at Cardiff University, my previous institution, in that each viva has a Chair as well as the internal and external examiners. The Chair is really present to ensure fair play and that proper procedure is followed, and is rarely (if ever) called upon to intervene in practice. I chaired a quite a few such examinations in Cardiff, but this will be my first in Maynooth.

On Wednesday there is the official handover of the position of Chair of the Euclid Consortium Diversity Committee during which I’ll be briefed about various ongoing matters, as well as generally being given the keys to the kingdom in terms of access to documents, websites and other paraphernalia.

There is a big announcement scheduled for Thursday by the NANOGrav collaboration. I don’t know what is on the agenda, but I suspect it may be the detection of a stochastic gravitational wave background using pulsar timing measurements. I may of course be quite wrong about that, but will blog about it anyway.

Then on Friday I have to prepare for another trip, a short one this time, to attend part of the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Cardiff.

Alongside those other things I have to make sure my repeat examinations are ready to be printed ahead of the examination session in August. Students received their final grades last week (while I was away). I don’t know how many will need to take repeat examinations, but there will undoubtedly be some.

Anyway, I have an article I really want to finish by the end of today, so I’ll stop there and get on with it.

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Copenhagen Looking Back

Posted in Biographical, Euclid, OJAp Papers, The Universe and Stuff on June 23, 2023 by telescoper

So here I am then, back in Maynooth. I had a relatively stress-free trip back, although my plane was a bit late and I had to run through Dublin Airport to catch the Hopper Bus I was booked on. Made it though.

The first thing I want to do is to thank the organizers for what was a wonderful event. I wasn’t able to attend the Euclid Consortium meeting in Oslo last year, largely because it was earlier in the year, in April (i.e. term-time) and I had teaching responsibilities. I gather it was a rather gloomy occasion because there was no concrete plan for the launch of Euclid thanks to the Russian war against Ukraine. I guess few would have predicted then that the 2023 meeting would be just a week or so before a launch on SpaceX!

I have to say the atmosphere was also helped by the excellent weather and very fine catering. The conference dinner was held in the Banqueting Hall, on the first floor of the Hans Christian Anderson Castle which stands at one of the entrances to the famous Tivoli Gardens, a few minutes from the conference venue.

Finally, one other memory that will stay with me for a while. It turned out that the week of the conference coincided with high-school graduation celebrations in Copenhagen, so every day we encountered lots of exuberant and largely inebriated teenagers around wearing funny hats and generally going a bit berserk. They made quite a lot of noise in the evenings, but it was all harmless. You’re only young once!

Having not been at an in-person conference for over four years, it was great to see some new faces and catch up with some people I haven’t seen for a long time. It was especially nice to talk to a couple of members of the Editorial Board of the Open Journal of Astrophysics. It was also nice to talk to some authors. Talking of which, here is Nicolas Tessore delivering a plenary presentation featuring work from one of the papers he has published with OJAp:

Anyway, I was up a stupid o’clock to catch my flight this morning so I think I’ll have a bit of rest and hope for the rain to stop so I can do some shopping.

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Euclid Diversity Matters

Posted in Biographical, Euclid, Harassment Bullying etc with tags , , , , , on June 22, 2023 by telescoper

It was officially announced at the Euclid Consortium Meeting in Copenhagen this morning that I have been appointed to the role of Chair of the Euclid Consortium Diversity Committee (ECDC). This has been in the pipeline for a while, but I have refrained from saying anything publicly until the appointment was endorsed by the Euclid Consortium Lead (ECL) and Euclid Consortium Board (ECB) which has now happened.

The previous Chair, Prof. Mathilde Jauzac, is stepping down because her term on the ECDC has come to an end. I’ve been a member of the ECDC for three years during which time Mathilde has done a brilliant job as Chair and she’ll be a very difficult act to follow in this role. There was a standing ovation in the room this morning when Mathilde finished delivering her final ECDC report. It will be down to me to deliver next year’s report, at the 2024 Euclid Consortium Meeting, which will be in Rome.

Instead of trying to describe the role and activities of the ECDC generally, I will direct you to the information given on the brand new Euclid Consortium website which is a one-stop shop for everything to do with Euclid. You can find specific information about Equity, Diversity and Conduct there and/or on the ECDC’s own public website here from which I’ve taken a screengrab of the nice banner:

Just for information, the Euclid Consortium has about 2700 members so it really is a very large organization, and it is the aim of the ECDC to encourage a positive and inclusive environment within it for the benefit of everyone in it.

I’m looking forward to this role for the next year. I have only one year left of my term left on the ECDC so I will almost certainly be Chair for one year only. As regular readers of this blog – both of them – will know, I am on sabbatical next year which means I should have time to take on this responsibility, which I wouldn’t be able to do if I had my full teaching and admin load.

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Euclid Consortium Meeting 2023

Posted in Biographical, Euclid, The Universe and Stuff with tags , on June 19, 2023 by telescoper
Foyer

I made it to the conference venue (CPH Conference) for this year’s Euclid Consortium Meeting, which is 5 minutes walk from my hotel.

One thing that confused me when I looked at the programme last night was that all the rooms in the conference centre are named after locations in and around the city, e.g. Kastrup, Amager, Vesterbro, etc. For a while I thought the delegates would be running around Copenhagen to find their parallel sessions! Then I realized these were just names of meeting rooms…

The full programme doesn’t start until tomorrow but today I attended a couple of sessions aimed at early career researchers, not because I identify myself as such but because I wanted to listen to questions they asked and the advice given to them, much of which was very sound.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow, especially the plenaries, but first: dinner.

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A Birthday Thank You!

Posted in Biographical, Mental Health with tags on June 17, 2023 by telescoper

You may recall that a couple of weeks ago, on the occasion of my birthday, I started a fundraiser  for Pieta, which is a charity working to prevent suicide and self-harm. Well, the fundraiser is now closed and I’m very glad to say that the official fundraiser on Facebook reached my target. I know that quite a few more people gave directly to Pieta without going through Facebook so the amount of money raised overall comfortably exceeded the goal. Thank you so much to everyone who made a contribution. I really do appreciate it.

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The News from Nottingham

Posted in Biographical with tags , , on June 13, 2023 by telescoper

I was shocked this morning to stumble across the news (which made it onto the media in Ireland) of the horrific events in Nottingham in the early hours of this morning that left three people dead. Only later was it revealed that two of those dead were students at the University of Nottingham. This must be a very difficult time for the whole community in Nottingham and particularly the University. My thoughts are with everyone affected by these events, especially those who were injured or otherwise traumatized, and I send sincere condolences to the bereaved.

RTÉ put up this graphic showing the locations involved:

I lived in Nottingham and worked at the University of Nottingham for about eight years (from 1999 until 2007) . The locations shown are much closer to the City Centre than either the University campus or where I lived (in Beeston), both of which are off the map downwards and to the left. Despite this, and the fact that I haven’t been there for some time, I remember the area well enough to be shaken by the thought of things like this happening in such a familiar place. It must be much more difficult for those more directly affected.

I think the two students were found dead at Ilkeston Road in the early hours of this morning, but the rest of the picture of what happened remains very confused. It does no good to speculate on social media – as many are sadly doing – about the details or the motivation for the violence and mayhem. We’ll find out the truth in due course.

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The Queer Variable

Posted in Biographical, LGBTQ+ with tags on June 11, 2023 by telescoper

As it’s Pride Month I’d take this opportunity to re-advertise The Queer Variable which is a collection of 40 interviews with people who are studying or working in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM) and who are part of the LGBTQ+ community. You can find out more about the book and download it for free as a PDF or an e-book (whatever that is) here.

There’s a review of the book in the Journal of Science Communication from which I quote

“The Queer Variable” is an edited collection of interviews with 40 LGBTQ+ people who experienced the full range of issues — positive and negative — that queer people in STEM regularly face. Through their own voices they describe how unnecessarily difficult certain academic environments can be, and how many chances to do good science go to waste when institutions and their leaders implicitly and explicitly discourage LGBTQ+ people from advancing their careers in STEM. The book contains a wealth of good advice for university leaders, lab directors, teachers and many others in leadership positions on how to make their organisations inclusive, diverse and respectful of everyone.

Andrea Bandelli (2022). Together in diversity: insights and wisdom from LGBTQ+ people working in STEM JCOM 21(06), R03.

I am one of the people interviewed for the book. My interview is actually the first in the book, which suggests I might have been the first person interviewed. Most of the interviews took place between 2020 and 2021, but I seem to remember doing mine (over a rather choppy Zoom connection) back in late 2019 when I was a mere lad of 56 years old and before the Covid-19 pandemic. That all seems a very long time ago now!

Anyway, many thanks to Alfredo Carpineti and Shaun O’Boyle for compiling this collection and making it available. I hope people will find it useful.

Incidentally, one of the sponsors of this project is Science Foundation Ireland whose Director General, Prof. Philip Nolan (former President of Maynooth University) is quoted thusly:

SFI is delighted to support this important publication, which highlights the diverse spectrum of talent and experience among our LGBTQ+ research colleagues. STEM research must benefit all of our society and therefore STEM careers must also be welcoming and accessible to all members of our society. I thank all of the contributors for sharing their powerful personal stories and for providing insights into the challenges they have faced on their career journeys. By raising their voices, they are helping break down barriers for future generations.

Well said.

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