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News Page |
July 2002 |
This month's news stories:SPAT Promotions |
We are proud to announce the promotions of Dr. Michele Dougherty to a Readership in Space Physics and of Dr. Bob Forsyth to a Senior Lectureship. These promotions, we are pleased to say, do justice to the significant contributions both Michele and Bob have made to their scientific topics, to the reputation of the group and to the teaching life of the Department.
Following her PhD in South Africa and first post-doctoral position in Germany, Michele joined the group in early 1991. Her original scientific brief was to prepare the exploitation of the Jupiter flyby, in 1992, by the Ulysses spacecraft that was to spend two weeks in the vicinity of the giant planet. Michele work’s covered the determination of Jupiter’s magnetic field that backed up the earlier determination by the Pioneer mission and remains currently the last word on the subject. She has also worked on current systems in the jovian magnetosphere and their relationship with aurorae near Jupiter’s poles and the properties of waves and their origin in the magnetosphere. From the mid-1990s, Michele has taken an increasingly greater role in the leadership of the group’s Magnetic Field Investigation on NASA’s Cassini Saturn Orbiter mission and has been Acting Principal Investigator for the past two years. Her main concern now is to make sure that the investigation and the team will be ready for the arrival of the spacecraft to Saturn in July 2004 and the great scientific exploration of Saturn, its moons, rings and its magnetosphere. In her time off these activities [what time off? - Michele] she tends her vine to grow grapes, but she is willing, in the meantime, to sample the more professionally produced wines from her native South Africa and elsewhere, in particular when accompanied by some fine cheese.
Bob Forsyth joined the group after finishing his PhD at Aberdeen University in 1989. He arrived in good time for the launch of the Ulysses spacecraft in October 1990 and has been at the heart of the major development of heliospheric research in the group. Bob has carved out an international reputation in the analysis and interpretation of magnetic field observations in the heliosphere, and has written several seminal scientific papers on the way the three-dimensional magnetic field lines are distributed as they are carried in the solar wind from the solar corona out to the nearby interstellar space. He has established many fruitful scientific collaborations with space scientists in the USA and in Europe and has a well-deserved reputation as a very conscientious partner in these collaborations. More recently, he has been also involved with the observations made by the Cassini instrument in interplanetary space, on its way to Saturn. In addition to his wide-ranging research activities he has been appointed to be Senior Tutor in the Physics Department from September 2002. He hopes that looking after the welfare of 600 or so undergraduates will still leave him with enough time to pursue his heliospheric research. But, away from it all, on Saturday July 13th Bob is hoping to climb his last Munro (defined as a Scottish mountain over 3000 feet) of which there are 284 in all. The hill in question is Carn Dearg (located southwest of Aviemore) a relatively unknown but easy one to finish on. Around a dozen likeminded people are lined up to accompany Bob on this last climb and they firmly intend to celebrate Bob’s achievement.
Very warm congratulations to both Michele and Bob on the occasion of their promotions !
André Balogh 5th July 2002
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