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Reminder: What is Quantum Technology? – A Public Lecture by Prof. Sir Peter Knight

Posted in Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on March 10, 2021 by telescoper

I thought I’d post a quick reminder that tomorrow, Thursday March 11th (at 7pm), the Maynooth University Faculty of Science and Engineering will present its first ever Dean’s Lecture.of the Faculty of Science and Engineering. This is a public event, consisting of a talk followed by a Q&A session. I’m told that over 350 people have signed up for this talk but there’s still room for a few more.

The topic of the talk is quantum technology and it is presented by Prof. Sir Peter Knight who is Senior Research Investigator at Imperial College London. He retired in 2010 as Deputy Rector (Research) at Imperial. He was knighted in 2005 for his work in optical physics. Knight was the 2004 President of the Optical Society of America and 2011-2013 President of the Institute of Physics. He is Editor of Contemporary Physics, Chair of the UK National Quantum Technology Programme Strategy Advisory Board, chairs the Quantum Metrology Institute at the National Physical Laboratory, was until 2010 chair of the UK Defence Scientific Advisory Council and remains a UK Government science advisor. His research centres on quantum optics and quantum technology. He has won the Thomas Young Medal and the Glazebrook Medal of the Institute of Physics, the Ives Medal and the Walther Medal and Prize of the OSA, the Royal Medal of the Royal Society and the Faraday Prize of the IET.

Here is a description of the talk:

We already live in a quantum-enabled world with devices powered by quantum mechanics affecting our everyday world (lasers, telecoms semiconductor chips, and much more). But we are now poised to exploit a hitherto largely unexplored technology capability enabled by some of the stranger aspects of quantum physics: quantum coherence and entanglement. These new capabilities include novel sensing, timing, imaging, and of course computing. I will describe these new quantum coherence capabilities and plans to develop the next generation of quantum technologies. Quantum Information Science is advancing our understanding of the physical world in remarkable ways. But it is also driving novel and disruptive technologies. I will describe plans for ensuring the advanced quantum science and demonstrator platforms in imaging, sensing, communications, and computing developed over the past five years or so will drive the formation of the quantum technology sector and embed quantum technology in a broad range of industries.

The event is free but you will need to register here.

P.S. I will have a small part in this event – welcoming people to it and generally directing traffic.

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The Next President of Maynooth University

Posted in Maynooth with tags , on March 8, 2021 by telescoper

 

After a process that has taken several months to complete, Maynooth University has at last appointed its next President!

Here is the official press release (I added the link to Professor Leinonen’s current affiliation):

Maynooth University appoints an international researcher and current Vice-Chancellor as its next President

The Governing Authority of Maynooth University today appointed Professor Eeva Leinonen to be its next President effective from 1 October 2021.  Professor Leinonen will succeed Professor Philip Nolan who has led the University for the past 10 years.

Professor Leinonen has held the role of Vice Chancellor of Murdoch University, Perth, Australia since 2016, having previously been Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic) at the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia.  Prior to moving to Australia in 2012, she was Vice Principal (Education) at King’s College London.

Originally from Finland, Professor Leinonen has a background in linguistics and psychology.  She engages with researchers in Finland and Italy in ongoing research into pragmatic language development in children and contextual processing deficits of children and young adults with autistic spectrum disorders.

The Chairperson of the Governing Authority, Dr Mary Canning, said she was delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Leinonen as the next President of Maynooth University. Dr Canning believes that Professor Leinonen’s track record in the leadership and management of higher education institutions internationally will be of great benefit to Maynooth University, the Irish Universities Association and the higher education system in general at this critical time.  She wished Professor Leinonen well as she takes up her new role.

In accepting her appointment, Professor Leinonen said that she was honoured to have the opportunity to lead this fine university in the next stage of its development.

“High quality innovative education, world class research that has positive societal impact and transformational educational opportunities for all who can benefit irrespective of background are hallmarks of Maynooth University and resonate closely with my approach to university education.”

“I am very much looking forward to working collaboratively with colleagues across the University, with students, the Governing Authority, Academic Council, the Irish education sector and the many partners and supporters of Maynooth University to build on the University’s impressive achievements gained under the leadership of Professor Nolan and previous Presidents.”

I’d like to take the opportunity to wish Professor Leinonen all the very best for her time in the role!

 

 

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Reminder: Job in Theoretical Physics at Maynooth!

Posted in Maynooth with tags , on March 7, 2021 by telescoper

I’ve got a very busy week in front of me as we head towards the St Patrick’s Week Study Break so I thought I’d take the time to remind you all while I remember that we have a fixed-term job available in the Department of Theoretical Physics at Maynooth University, the deadline for which is a week from today. You can find the details here.

The position is for 10 months, starting in September 2021, and is to provide teaching cover for Professor Jiri Vala who will be on sabbatical next year. He originally intended to take his sabbatical this academic year, starting in September 2020, hence the previous advertisement of this post, but it was postponed for reasons of Covid-19 and the previous position was not filled.

I know it is a relatively short appointment, but it seems to me that it would provide a good opportunity for an early-career academic, perhaps someone straight out of a PhD, to gain some teaching experience.

The deadline for applications is 23.30 on Sunday March 14th, i.e. about 4 weeks away, and you should apply through the jobs portal here.

If you’d like to know any more please feel free to contact me privately.

Oh, and please feel free to pass this on to anyone who may be interested!

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Postgraduate Programmes in Theoretical Physics at Maynooth University

Posted in Education, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on March 2, 2021 by telescoper

We have a (virtual) Postgraduate Open Day coming up on Tuesday 9th March at Maynooth University (for which you can register here). To go with that here is a short video of our new Postgraduate Coordinator Dr John Regan answering some frequently asked questions about the programmes we offer in the Department of Theoretical Physics:

If you have any other questions then you can register for the Open Day where we will have staff on hand to answer them in a live Q&A session.

You could also follow the Department’s Twitter feed here:

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The Joy of Rollmops

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags , , on March 2, 2021 by telescoper

The other day I had a bit of a craving for pickled herring which, in the form of rollmops, is something I’ve liked since I was a kid but rediscovered on a trip to Denmark many years ago where sild on lovely rugbrød with a peberrod sauce became one of my favourite light meals. Pickled herring doesn’t seem to be so popular in Ireland but fortunately it is popular with folk from countries around the Baltic Sea, including Poland, and in Maynooth there is a very nice little Polish mini-market where I found a wide variety of pickled herrings with different kinds of marinade.

In the course of this discovered what the Polish word for rollmops is:

For some reason I had always assumed that “rollmops” was an English word but in fact it is of German origin and Rollmops is actually singular (the plural is Rollmöpse).

In the shop I also bought some rye bread and horseradish to go with the fish. In fact the little shop is full of lovely produce and, although yesterday was the first time I’ve been inside, I’m sure to be a regular visitor in future.

I know some people don’t like pickled herring at all but I love it. In fact I think it’s tanginess makes it an ideal starter and I’ve often served it as such when I’ve had guests for dinner. The bonus is you don’t need to cook it!

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A Year of Covid-19 in Ireland

Posted in Biographical, Covid-19, Maynooth, Politics with tags , , on February 28, 2021 by telescoper

Last night I was updating my Covid-19 statistics and plotting new graphs (which I do every day – the results are here) when I noticed that I now have 365 data points. The first officially recorded case of Covid-19 in Ireland was dated 29th February 2020 (although there is evidence of cases in Ireland before that, including one of community transmission). I can’t actually mark the anniversary of that date exactly – for obvious reasons – but it seems a good point to look at what has happened. I didn’t actually start doing a daily update until 22nd March when we were all in the first lockdown but there were relatively few cases in the intervening time and it was possible quite easily to fill in the earlier data.

Little did I know that I would be doing an update every day for a year!

Anyway, here are today’s plots:

 

On a linear y-axis the cases look like this:

 

The numbers for deaths on a linear scale look like this:

 

The recent trend is for a slow decline in new cases, hospitalizations, ICU referrals and testing positivity rates which is all good news. The rate of vaccination- severely limited by supply issues – is starting to increase and from April to June is expected to reach a million a month and then two million a month thereafter. There is therefore some grounds for optimism that a significant fraction of the population will be immunized by the end of the summer, assuming the supply ramps up as expected and there are no more dirty tricks from certain pharmaceutical companies.

Comparing with the situations elsewhere I’d say that Ireland has in broad terms handled the pandemic quite well: worse than some (especially Scandinavian countries) but better than many. It does seem to me that there have been three serious errors:

  1. There has never been – and still isn’t – any sensible plan for imposing quarantine on arrivals into Ireland. A year on one is being put in place but it is simply ridiculous that an island like Ireland failed to do this earlier.
  2. Those lockdown measures that have been imposed have been very weakly enforced, and have often been accompanied by confused messaging from the Government, with the result that a significant minority of people have simply ignored the restrictions. The majority of the population has complied but the others that haven’t have kept the virus in circulation at a high level: the current daily rate of new cases is 650-700, which is far too high, and is declining only slowly.
  3. Finally, and probably the biggest mistake of all, was to relax restriction for the Christmas holiday. The huge spike in infections and deaths in January and February is a direct result of this catastrophic decision for which the Government is entirely culpable.

The situation in the United Kingdom with regard to 3 was even worse:

The excess mortality from January is a direct consequence of Boris Johnson “saving Christmas”. The difference in area under the two curves tells you precisely how many people he killed. I hope politicians on both sides of the Irish Sea are one day held to account for their negligence.

As for myself, I am reasonably optimistic for the future, and not just because Spring appears to have arrived. I have found the Covid-19 restrictions very irksome but I am fortunate to be in a position to cope with them reasonably well, especially now that I have my own house with a garden in a nice quiet neighbourhood.

It has been very hard work doing everything online, and it’s essential to take a break from the screen from time to time, but the upside of that is that by keeping busy you avoid becoming bored and frustrated. One thing that does annoy me though is the number of people who thinking that “working from home” means “not working at all”. I’m sure there are many others, especially in the education sector, who will agree with me!

Although I have coped reasonably well in a personal sense I still very much want to get back to campus to resume face-to-face teaching. I like talking to students and find teaching much more rewarding when there is a response. Moreover, since we’re now going to be off campus until the end of this academic year, that means that a second cohort of students will complete their degrees and graduate this summer without their lecturers being there to congratulate them in person and give them a proper sendoff into the big wide world. I find that very sad.

Anyway, tomorrow we start week 5 of the Semester, which means 4 weeks have passed. That means there are two weeks before the Study Break, the halfway point of teaching term, and we are one-third of the way through the semester. Life goes on.

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Particle Physics Masterclass at Maynooth

Posted in Education, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on February 26, 2021 by telescoper

I have already informed you of a Masterclass in Astrophysics & Cosmology at Maynooth that will take place on March 25th 2021. For more information on that event including instructions on how to book see here.

Now it’s time to announce the International Masterclass on Particle Physics. The  Department of Theoretical Physics has hosted such event for secondary school students each Spring, apart from last year when it was cancelled because of Covid-19.  The next event will take place online on 21 and 22 March 2021. You can find more information, including instructions on how to book a place, here.

These Masterclasses give secondary school students the opportunity to discover the world of quarks and leptons for themselves, by performing measurements on real data from CERN, meeting active particle physics researchers and linking up with like-minded students from other countries.  We will join thousands of other secondary school students at more than 100 universities and laboratories around Europe and worldwide in a programme stretching over four weeks.

Physics at the most fundamental level – the smallest and most basic building blocks of matter – is an exotic world.  But a few introductory talks and working with data from CERN will give the students insight into the fundamental particles of matter and the forces between them, as well as what went on during the Big Bang.

On Sunday afternoon, the students are introduced to particle physics, experiments and detectors in lectures given by active particle physics researchers.  On Monday, after a virtual visit to the ALICE detector at CERN, they work on their own with data from ALICE Afterwards they participate in a video conference with students from other countries and moderators at CERN, where they discuss and compare their results.

For more information on the Particle Physics Masterclasses, see the International Masterclasses web site.

I don’t know. You wait ages for a Masterclass in Physics at Maynooth University, and then along come two in quick succession!

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Údarás na Gaeltachta

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags , , on February 25, 2021 by telescoper

In today’s lunchtime Irish Language lesson we learned a bit about the Gaeltacht, i.e. Irish speaking areas in Ireland. Here is a little video:

You will see that most of the Gaeltacht is in the Western extremes of the country because these are the regions that largely escaped the English encroachment and suppression of the Irish language. One thing I wasn’t aware of before today however is that there is a part quite near Maynooth in the form of the town of Ráth Chairn (English: Rathcairn) about 40km away in County Meath. The people who live there were originally from Connemara so they speak the Gaeilge Chonnacht. This is where our teacher comes from, actually, so if I ever develop any ability to speak the language I’ll probably have do so with a Connacht accent!

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Astrophysics & Cosmology Masterclass at Maynooth

Posted in Education, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on February 23, 2021 by telescoper

Regular readers of the blog – both of them – may remember that we planned to present a Masterclass in Astrophysics & Cosmology on January 14th 2021 but this had to be postponed due to Covid-19 restrictions. After today’s announcements by the Government of  a phased return to school starting on March 1st we have now decided to proceed with a new date of March 25th 2021.

This will be a half-day virtual event via Zoom. It’s meant for school students in their 5th or 6th year of the Irish system, who should be returning to classrooms on March 15th, but there might be a few of them or their teachers who see this blog so I thought I’d share the news here. You can find more information, including instructions on how to book a place, here.

Here is the updated official poster and the programme:

I’ll be talking about cosmology early on, while John Regan will talk about black holes. After the coffee break one of our PhD students will talk about why they wanted to study astrophysics. Then I’ll say something about our degree programmes for those students who might be interested in studying astrophysics and/or cosmology as part of a science course. We’ll finish with questions either about the science or the study!

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What is Quantum Technology? – A Public Lecture by Prof. Sir Peter Knight

Posted in Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , on February 23, 2021 by telescoper

On Thursday March 11th (at 7pm) the Maynooth University Faculty of Science and Engineering will present its first ever Dean’s Lecture. This is a public event, consisting of a talk followed by a Q&A session.

The topic of the talk is quantum technology and it is presented by Prof. Sir Peter Knight who is Senior Research Investigator at Imperial College London. He retired in 2010 as Deputy Rector (Research) at Imperial. He was knighted in 2005 for his work in optical physics. Knight was the 2004 President of the Optical Society of America and 2011-2013 President of the Institute of Physics. He is Editor of Contemporary Physics, Chair of the UK National Quantum Technology Programme Strategy Advisory Board, chairs the Quantum Metrology Institute at the National Physical Laboratory, was until 2010 chair of the UK Defence Scientific Advisory Council and remains a UK Government science advisor. His research centres on quantum optics and quantum technology. He has won the Thomas Young Medal and the Glazebrook Medal of the Institute of Physics, the Ives Medal and the Walther Medal and Prize of the OSA, the Royal Medal of the Royal Society and the Faraday Prize of the IET.

Here is a description of the talk:

We already live in a quantum-enabled world with devices powered by quantum mechanics affecting our everyday world (lasers, telecoms semiconductor chips, and much more). But we are now poised to exploit a hitherto largely unexplored technology capability enabled by some of the stranger aspects of quantum physics: quantum coherence and entanglement. These new capabilities include novel sensing, timing, imaging, and of course computing. I will describe these new quantum coherence capabilities and plans to develop the next generation of quantum technologies. Quantum Information Science is advancing our understanding of the physical world in remarkable ways. But it is also driving novel and disruptive technologies. I will describe plans for ensuring the advanced quantum science and demonstrator platforms in imaging, sensing, communications, and computing developed over the past five years or so will drive the formation of the quantum technology sector and embed quantum technology in a broad range of industries.

The event is free but you will need to register here.

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