I’ve been playing host today to my former PhD student, now at the University of Vienna, Mateja Gosenca, who gave a talk on “Ultralight Dark Matter: Phenomenology and Observational Constraints”. Mateja did an MSc at the University of Sussex before doing a PhD under my supervision, so it is very nice to have her visit us in Maynooth.
It was only when I started to think about how to introduce her Colloquium that I remembered that Mateja was co-author of the very first paper published by the Open Journal of Astrophysics, way back in 2016. At that time we were running an experimental prototype site before switching to the Scholastica platform we now use, but it was still a landmark. We’ve now published 415 papers.
A couple of years ago I posted an item about the news of a proposed merger of Maynooth University and Dundalk Institute of Technology. That piece began with the following:
Life is full of surprises, especially if you’re a member of academic staff at Maynooth University.
Today it was revealed that the institution that employs me is planning to merge with Dundalk Institute of Technology. It was revealed not in a direct message to staff, but through an article in the national media, in this case the Sunday Independent. The article there is paywalled but there is another piece here.
This is astonishing news, not least because of the way it has come out. Yet again, the only way that staff at Maynooth can find out what’s going on is through the newspapers. Senior Management don’t deign to inform us of anything…
Not surprisingly I hadn’t heard anything about how the proposed merger was progressing except for a couple of items in the national media. For example, in May this year, there was an announcement of the formation of a Regional Graduate Academy linking postgraduate education in Dundalk and Maynooth.
Today, however, I saw another news item announcing that Dundalk IT has now decided to become a College of Queen’s University Belfast. It explains:
The new partnership between Queens University Belfast and Dundalk Institute of Technology is not a “parent child relationship,” and represents the first “all-Ireland university”, the Minister for Further and Higher Education has said.
DkIT is set to become a University College following the agreement with QUB, which will see it change from an IT to a University College of Queen’s University Belfast.
What does this new new relationship between DkIT and QUB mean for the old new relationship between DkIT and Maynooth University? Have they called the Maynooth-Dundalk merger off? Or will the three institutions form a ménage à trois?
Don’t ask me. I only work here. Perhaps I’ll be able to find out by reading the newspapers.
P.S. Coincidentally, the next “President’s Update” for staff at Maynooth, scheduled for December, has been postponed until the New Year.
P.P.S. It is about 80km from Belfast to Dundalk and about 100km from Dundalk to Maynooth.
Just a quick post to point out that today is LGBTQIA+ STEM Day, which aims to celebrate to celebrate the work of LGBTQIA+ people in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), but also to highlight the barriers still facing us.
This also provides an opportunity for me to send my best wishes to all LGBTQIA+ staff and students at Maynooth and around the world! As far as I know, my Employer is not marking this occasion. This surprises me as it is not unknown for them to engage in pinkwashing from time to time, whenever it suits them for some reason.
P.S. I’m reminded that it was 22 years ago today that Section 28 was finally repealed in England and Wales. With reactionary fforces around the world attacking our hard-won rights, it is important that we cling on to what we’ve got.
Returning to my office in the Science Building at Maynooth University I saw a new feature, which I initially thought was a mobile coffee shop, but which turned out to be the Quantum & Answers trailer, a mobile engagement unit, developed by IrelandQCI, and designed to bring quantum technologies to life for the general public in Ireland.
In case you weren’t aware, IrelandQCI, the ‘Building a National Quantum Communication Infrastructure for Ireland’ project incorporates integrating innovative and secure quantum devices and systems into conventional communication infrastructures. This will be done by enhancing the ESB Telecoms’ optical fibre network with an additional layer of security, all based on quantum physics, in particular quantum key distribution (QKD).
It’s on Maynooth University campus for the rest of the day so if you’re around please feel free to visit and talk about quantum encryption and the like.
I couldn’t resist sharing this picture I took after lunch of a Norway Maple in St Joseph’s Square on Maynooth University Campus. I like the gradual transitions of colour from green to yellow and orange and red with height. Most of the other trees have lost most of their leaves already.
Today has been a very busy day. I had a one-hour lecture on Partial Differential Equations from 11-12 this morning and a two-hour lecture on Ordinary Differential Equations from 2-4 this afternoon. In between those instead of having a lunch break, I was virtually in Chile giving a talk via Teams about the Open Journal of Astrophysics at LISA 10. That is not LISA as in the Laser Interferometric Space Antenna, but LISA as in Library and Information Services in Astronomy. I was invited to attend this in person, and would have gone, had it not clashed with teaching, as I have never set foot in Chile nor anywhere else in South America.
The talk went well and I had a number of questions and comments.
I got up early this morning to publish a paper taking our total so far to 399. By an unfortunate coincidence there was some problem with the integration between Crossref and our Scholastica platform so the publication didn’t go through properly. When I returned after my afternoon lectures, however, I found that whatever the problem was, it had sorted itself out; the paper is here.
The last talk I gave of this kind was May 2025, and the slides for that talk indicate that OJAp had published 293 papers so we have published over 100 papers in the 6 months since then. Unless there is another glitch tomorrow I expect we’ll reach 400 in the morning.
from left to right: Dr Neil Trappe (HoD, Physics); Dr John Regan; Dr Aoibhinn Gallagher; Dr Matthew Birney; Dr Hannah O’Brennan; me; Dr Jonivar Skullerud
Yesterday I attended a conferring ceremony at Maynooth which was a very special occasion because it involved the formal award of the PhD degree to Aoibhinn Gallagher whom I supervised. Two other research students from the Department of Physics got their PhDs yesterday too; Matthew Birney and Hannah O’Brennan. Matthew (ESO Garching) and Aoibhinn (Bielefeld) both now have postdoctoral positions in Germany, incidentally.
These events are not actually called Graduation Ceremonies here in Ireland but Conferring Ceremonies. I was impressed that the local suppliers of academic dress, Phelan Conan were able to supply the correct 1989 vintage DPhil gown from Sussex University as opposed to the less interesting modern one. I would have worn it for the picture above, but by the time we found Hannah to take the photo I had already returned it to the supplier. Here are two more with myself in the gown and mortarboard:
left to right: Dr Emma Whelan; Dr Matthew Birney; Dr Aoibhinn Gallagher; meMyself and Aoibhinn
You can see a picture of me wearing the same sort of gown in Brighton back in 1989, when I was a skinny young queen, here. I’ll add more pictures from yesterday if and when I get them.
As well as the PhDs we also saw the entire class of our MSc in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics get their degrees. I haven’t got any photographs of them, but will add any that I find. Here is a photograph of them outside the TSI building, courtesy of Jonivar Skullerud.
After the ceremony, those who got their degrees went for dinner with their respective parents, siblings and others who had come to attend the ceremony. We did meet up later on, however, in a local pub for a drink or several. In among all that I didn’t have time to write a post, bringing to an end a blogging streak of 109 days.
Graduation ceremonies are funny things. With all their costumes and weird traditions, they even seem a bit absurd. On the other hand, even in these modern times, we live with all kinds of rituals and I don’t see why we shouldn’t celebrate academic achievement in this way.
I like graduation ceremonies, actually. As each person walks across to be presented with their scroll you realize that every one of them has a unique story to tell and a whole universe of possibilities in front of them. How their lives will unfold no-one can tell, but it’s a privilege to be there for one important milestone on their journey, even those from other departments with whom you have had no contact at all.
I always find these ceremonies bittersweet occasions, though. There’s joy and celebration, of course, but these are tempered by the realization that many of the young people whom you’ve seen around long enough to grow accustomed to their faces, will disappear into the big wide world, in some cases never to be seen again. Although everyone is rightly proud of the achievement – either their own in the case of the graduands or that of others in the case of the guests – there’s also a bit of sadness to go with the goodbyes. It always seems that as a lecturer you are only just getting to know students by the time they graduate, but that’s enough to miss them when they go.
Anyway, all this is a roundabout way of saying congratulations once more to everyone who graduated yesterday, including Matthew, Hannah and Aoibhinn, and I wish you all the very best for the future!
It’s Sunday 26th October 2025 and in the early hours of this morning the clocks went back, bidding goodbye to Summer Time. You can tell I’m an oldie because I have quite a lot of time-keeping devices around the house that need to be set by hand. My computer updates itself, of course, but I’m not sure if WordPress does. I’ll find out when I publish this post!
I’ve written before about the silly business of moving the clocks backwards and forwards (e.g. here) so I won’t repeat it all again. I will mention, however, that some time ago, before the Covid-19 Pandemic, the European Parliament approved a directive that would abolish `Daylight Saving Time’. Unfortunately that plan was ‘paused’ although Spain is apparently going to try to get it going again. I’ve long felt that the annual ritual of putting the clocks forward in the Spring and back again in the Autumn was a waste of time effort, so I’ll be glad if and when this silly practice is terminated. It would be far better in my view to stick with a single Mean Time throughout the year. I’m disappointed that this hasn’t already happened.
Anyway, talking of time, we have now completed five weeks of teaching in Semester 1 at Maynooth University. Tomorrow (Monday 27th October) is the October Bank Holiday and next week is Study Week so there are no lectures or tutorials. We do, however, have conferring (graduation) ceremonies including one that involves my recently-completed PhD student. Looking at my diary I notice also that I also have an appointment for my flu jab and Covid-19 booster, another sign that I’m an old codger.
Normally Study Break comes halfway through the 12-week teaching term but this year it splits 5-7. It did so last year too, actually. I am not unhappy to have an earlier break as I’m very tired, but I am conscious that this is going to make for a longer run-in to the Christmas holiday. We are supposed to teach up until Friday 19th December, but I don’t have any lectures on that day.
I’m not sure how much studying the students do during Study Week, but it’s not a holiday for academic staff even though there is no undergraduate teaching. Among other things we have examinations to write for the January examination period, which must be checked and printed well in advance. The deadline for these is November 3rd, so I have all week but I am planning to spend next weekend elsewhere so I need to get them done beforehand.
So we come to it at last. After weeks of campaigning, today’s the day we get to cast our votes in the election of a new President of the Republic of Ireland. All the polls suggest that the winner will be Catherine Connolly, and indeed the only posters I have seen around my neighbourhood are for her.
The only message I got through the door was for her too:
I shall shortly be heading to the Presentation Girls National School in Maynooth, which is my polling station. I’ll be voting for Catherine Connolly, in case you want to know. She is clearly the better candidate; my opinion of Heather Humphreys went down every time I heard her speak. Anyway, we should know the result by tomorrow evening when we’ll find out whether the opinion polls are right.
Today also happens to be the last day before our study break in Maynooth University and the start of a long weekend. I did my last teaching session of the week yesterday, actually. That’s why I didn’t have to get up early to vote before work. It also means have research on the agenda for today. Monday 27th October is a Bank Holiday and there are no lectures for the rest of the week. There are conferring ceremonies, though, including one for my recently-completed PhD student on Wednesday.
Update: I voted as planned. The polling station was fairly busy.
On Friday I attended a colloquium in the Physics Department at Maynooth University by Asta Heinesen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. The talk had the title of Cosmography of the local Universe, as shown on the first slide:
Asta talked about a very interesting programme of work that takes a different approach from most of modern cosmology in that it avoids making the prior assumption of global homogeneity and isotropy embodied by the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric. In particular, instead of assuming the isotropic expansion of the Universe, it tries to determine its properties directly using only such measurements as luminosity distances and redshifts. This method is not entirely model-independent because it does assume Lorentz invariance and the conditions required for the Etherington Reciprocity Theorem to hold, but it does not assume any particular form of the metric, so can be applied on scales where the distribution of matter is inhomogeneous and isotropic, e.g. in our local neighbourhood.
To apply this “metric-free” idea one has to construct as general as possible description of the kinematic properties of the underlying matter flow, allowing the global expansion to be anisotropic, and for there to be both rotation and shear. Obviously one would need a large number of measurements to extract anything like a full description of the matter flow, so generally one is restricted to deriving the low-order multipoles (monopole. dipole and quadrupole) as well as the observer’s velocity with respect to the large-scale matter flow.
I found Asta Heinesen’s seminar very stimulating in itself, but it was also nice to see that one of the papers on which it was based is published in the Open Journal of Astrophysics:
When I checked it, I found it was published on my birthday! Here is the overlay:
I freely admit that I feel quite proud to have played a small part in helping to get such interesting work published. I’m seeing more and more papers referenced like this, actually. I was reminded of the recent announcement of this year’s list of MacArthur Fellows. among them Kareem El-Badry who has published quite a few papers with the Open Journal of Astrophysics. His biography on the MacArthur Foundation page includes this:
He has published articles in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, The Astrophysical Journal, and The Open Journal of Astrophysics, among other leading scientific journals.
I’m pleased to see us listed with the established names. I mention this just in case there are still people out there who think it might damage their career if they publish with a non-mainstream journal. We are mainstream now…
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In the Dark 