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News Page |
December 2001 |
This month's news stories:Paul Green wins awardNew arrivals in SPAT |
This month's news.......The Worshipful Company of Scientific Instrument Makers award up to 3 awards to students in 10 specified universities each year. This year, one of these awards, worth £1,000, has been given to Paul Green of SPAT. He had to submit his CV and a 3-page summary of his work (on TAFTS), and had to attend a 45 minute interview, held in the Glazier's Hall, on the south end of London Bridge. As well as the lucre, Paul gets the title of 'Scholar Freeman of London', and becomes a member of the Worshipful Company for 5 years. He receives invitations to talks and to dinners regularly. For this, he has to provide (short) 6-monthly progress reports, which seems a pretty good bargain to me! I gather Paul heard about this through Vivien, so thanks to her for the original idea!
This is a very prestigious award, which is good for Paul, SPAT and IC, so warmest congratulations to Paul: well done!!
John Harries 7th December 2001
As always the 1st of October saw the arrival of the new intake of PhD students into the group, this year five in Atmospheric Physics and three in Space Physics. To give everyone in the group the opportunity to put names to the new faces they are seeing in the corridor and at group meetings, we've asked them all to contribute a few words of introduction for this news item.
First off we introduce Maxwell Bolton, pictured first right, who says: "I was born in Hexham, Northumbria but grew up in Dorset where I lived for twelve years before going to University at King's Collge London. My first degree was in Physics with Astrophysics. My PhD supervisors are John Harries and Juliet Pickering and I will be concerned with the practical workings of the TAFTS instrument observing infrared fluxes in the Tropopause. My interests include loud obnoxious music, mountain biking, climbing, cinema, making 'noise' with my guitar (please note that I don't use the word 'music') and karate, but only one of these activities at any given time."
Jennifer Griggs, in the adjacent picture, was born in Lincoln but spent most of her life living in a small village outside Sheffield. "I did my undergraduate degree (MSci) at Imperial working
in Space for my final year project. I am now working with John Harries on comparison of IRIS and IMG data. My outside interests include painting, travelling and campaigning on third world debt relief with the London Jubilee 2000 group."
Paul Hanlon is originally from Rugby in the sunny Midlands, but has been living in Leicester for the last four years whilst undertaking an MPhys degree. "My PhD supervisor is Michele Dougherty, my research topic being the Solar Wind interaction with Jupiter using the joint Galileo/Cassini dataset. My interests include, refuting the recent theory that I am in some way a member of the un-dead (see picture, far left), as well as all the usual rubbish that 20 somethings do."
Stephen Hughes, pictured immediately left, says "I spent most of my life in the small unintersting town of Newbury before I moved up to London to do a Physics degree here at Imperial. My general area of study is Local Helioseismology with Prof Mike Thompson. My interests are all the usual ones (music, film etc) but I also play the guitar."
David Osborne, nearest right, tells us that "I was born 23 years and a few months ago in Portsmouth and nothing of any relevance or interest happened until I graduated from Loughborough University with a BEng in Aeronautical Engineering. Having spent a year in the Engineering Projects and Aircraft Acquisitions Dept at Virgin Atlantic Airways, I decided a job in industry wasn't for me so came here to research a new turbulence model that will be applied to numerical simulations of inhomogeneous cloud. Prof Jo Haigh and Dr J C Vassilicos (Aeronautics) are my supervisors. My interests include football (coaching, until recently, with various Hampshire youth teams and playing, currently for the mighty mighty SPAT 7s, inaugural performance TBC) and squandering my grant on jazz, soul and funk vinyl."
James Scuffham, far right, was born and bred in Boston, "a small town in deepest fenland
Lincolnshire". "I moved to the bright lights of the big city to do my degree in Physics here at Imperial, and despite my better judgement I'm back to do a PhD. My supervisor is André Balogh and I'll be researching magnetic field measurements in the Earth's and Mercury's magnetospheres. Outside work, I'm a fan of basketball (playing and watching) and I have also been known to go mountain biking occasionally."
Gillian Straine, far left, was born in Aberdeen in the North East of Scotland where she lived and went to school until moving to London to study Physics (BSc) at Imperial in 1997. "I have now returned to IC, after a year out, to work on the TAFTS project, with John Harries as my supervisor. My main interests are climbing up mountains, dinghy sailing and learning Italian."
And last but not least, Paul Wilson, nearest left, says "I come from a village outside Reading in Berkshire, growing up I spent 3 years living in the Utica in New York State. I did my undergraduate degree in physics here at Imperial (MSci course) with my final year project under Vivien Moore. I took a year out after my degree working 3 months in Kuwait, for Schlumberger, and 6 months in Cambridge with the British Antarctic Survey, the rest of the time I spent travelling around Europe. My interests include travel, reading, music and I'm taking up Jitsu at the moment. My project here is on droughts and environmental time-series analysis, my supervisor is Ralf Toumi with a case award with the Environment Agency."
Bob Forsyth 7th December 2001
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