The Man with No Time

In my opinion, one of the most important aspects of an academic career is public outreach. Sadly, I think it's also one of the least appreciated aspects among the people occupying said academic careers, and usually the first to be dropped when time and/or funding is tight. As a PhD student I was heavily involved in the operation of the Astronomy department's mobile, inflatable planetarium. I even coordinated the program for two and a half years! We travelled all over Eastern Scotland giving shows to the public, and I loved it. Since starting my Postdoc position I've given several public talks, mostly at careers events. These have been great fun, and I learnt a lot about presenting from one of the outreach officers in the department at Warwick. But in the last six months or so I've started getting involved in a different side of the public engagement game - press interviews. These have been simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying, but on the whole I've e...

Something a little bit different today - I've been on television! I've mentioned it briefly before, but my boss is the 'Head of the Science Team' for the new ESA PLATO mission. Since it was selected by ESA last month he's been very busy giving talks, presentations, and interviews about the mission. Yesterday he had the science team from the local BBC TV channel along to interview him about it for a short piece. Since he was getting a bit fed up with the whole thing he decided that it would be good for myself and Dave (one of his PhD students) to get involved too! I was a little nervous about it, as I've not had any interaction with the press before. But it turned out to be a lot of fun. The science reporter was very easy going, and made it seem more like a chat than an interview. He did give me one piece of advice, which was to finish my thoughts even if I stumble rather than trying to restart, as you can always edit and do retakes. Very much like ...

(This blog entry was originally posted over at the 'Explore your Universe' website: link . I'm cross-posting it here for a different audience, and my own records) It’s been a while since I posted up my introduction, but I’ve been pretty busy over the last few months. Yesterday though I took the chance to break out of my normal routine, and help enthuse a new generation about science. Dundee Science Centre were holding a ‘Meet the Expert’ event for local schools, and I jumped in to help out as one of the scientists. It was a really fun, and very busy day. There were three scientists taking part; I took along a display of telescopes and showed the visitors how they worked, and how I use similar telescopes for finding planets. The others had a display of electronic circuits being designed for use on space satellites, and a set of experiments demonstrating electromagnetism, including the ever popular van de Graaff generator. We had four or five different school...

I recently signed up to be a part of the "Explore Your Universe" science outreach project. Outreach is something that I've been doing a reasonable amount of during my PhD, mostly in the form of the planetarium shows that I've been organising. But I've been considering outreach and science communication as a possible career alternative, and therefore looking for ways to broaden the outreach that I'm getting involved in. The 'Explore Your Universe' logo. I'm really looking forward to getting involved in this exciting project. (Credit: exploreyouruniverse.org) "Explore Your Universe"  is an interesting looking project from the UK Association of Science and Discovery Centres  that is basically a way to encourage research scientists to engage with the public in a friendly setting. The idea is that scientists, like me, sign up to the scheme and are assigned to a specific centre. There will be 'meet an expert' days at which...

This weekend saw the second big outing for the Planetarium show this summer. After our successat the Royal Highland Show we were invited by the Forestry Commission for Scotland to be a part of their marquee at the Edinburgh MELA . The MELA is a festival celebrating cultural diversity, in a variety of forms: music; dance, and food. The days were slightly shorter than at the Highland Show, only from 12:00 to 6:00, and the MELA only runs for two days over the weekend, so it was going to be a bit shorter than our last big event.

The week after I got back from Le Mans I was straight back into an incredibly busy week. Not working on my PhD, but doing outreach with the Planetarium team. We were invited, for the first time, to take part in the Royal Highland Show at Ingliston. I, of course, jumped at the chance to reach a much wider audience, but didn't realise just what I was letting myself in for! The poster that was drawn for us by the marquee's resident artist. (Credit: David Brown)

I thought I'd start my series of posts on where my time goes by talking about what is supposed to be my main occupation, and what I do for a living: Astronomy.