Monthly Archives: February 2021

18Feb/21

Online GRADnet Winter School a success!

GRADnet in collaboration with Mark Horner, Performance Pathways, successfully ran a three-day online course 15-17 February 2021 via Microsoft Teams for 30 delegates focusing on transferrable skills development.  The workshop looked at the complexities of team working, effective communication and how to best perform in a team, remote team working, with the opportunity to develop leadership qualities and skills.

Participants explored the benefits of, and opportunities for, improved self and social awareness; gaining an understanding of one’s strengths and areas for support; looking at how one’s working style impacts on co-workers; developing the experience, skills and qualities needed for future leadership.

Working in teams, remotely, using some A4 sheets of paper, paper clips and sticky tape, delegates had to construct a paper structure and balance a plastic bottle on top.

Chris Brunskill, Head of UK Space Programme, D-Orbit kindly provided the challenge “Design of a commercial space service” where delegates had to pitch and present their business plan in under 15 minutes! 

Congratulations to Team A who won the challenge:  Adel Aljarid, University of Sussex, Josefine Gårn, University of Hertfordshire, Kai Sun, University of Southampton, Terje Theisen, Royal Holloway University of London and Hannah Wood, University of Sussex.  They chose to start a satellite company for the remote censoring of crop fields to help farmers and insurance companies with crop fields.

This years’ Winter School was due to take place at Cumberland Lodge, Great Park Windsor, but was switched to online delivery due to the current Covid-19 lockdown.  The tech worked and thankfully everything ran very smoothly.

Feedback from participants:

  • “Good organisation of the workshop, communicating schedules and resources etc. and using the technology to make this work remotely”.
  • “The workshop facilitators were great and very effective. They did a great job motivating me to do my best.”
  • Thank you for a great event! I really enjoyed myself and both Mark and Chris were great.”
01Feb/21

Cosmological Clues for Beginners!

Congratulations to Dr Carolyn Devereux FRAS, University of Hertfordshire, on the publication of her new book: “Cosmological Clues:  Evidence for the Big Bang, Dark Matter and Dark Energy”.

Carolyn is a lecturer in astrophysics at the Centre for Astrophysics Research, specialising in galaxy evolution and observational cosmology using Cosmic Microwave Background lensing. After gaining her PhD from University College University (1990), she researched  electro-optical devices using ferroelectric liquid crystals and liquid crystal polymers at the Hirst Research Centre, GEC. After managing large IT projects in industry, followed by a career break, she changed fields to become an astrophysicist focusing on the measurement of dark matter halo mass and the role of dark matter in the evolution of the Large Scale Structure of the Universe.  

This book gives an overview of cosmology showing how the different theories and observations fit together to make the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model. The book is for beginner students (it is written without any equations) and focusses on understanding the concepts that make up the LCDM model of cosmology. It is written in a readable way with stories about how the LCDM model developed and the scientists involved in it’s  development. It covers the early universe, including difficult topics such as structure formation and inflation, and it looks at current research, exploring some of the key questions that we have in cosmology. This is a book that will help students understand cosmology.

To obtain access to the book see here.

Abstract:  Did the Universe have a beginning? Will it have an end? Or has it always been the same, never changing? This is the subject of cosmology; the study of the Universe, and this book provides a perfect introduction to the subject for anyone that is interested in the wonders of our Universe

This book provides an accessible overview of the Standard Model of Cosmology, which is explained in six Cosmological Clues, including evidence for the Big Bang and dark matter and dark energy – the keystones of modern cosmology. 

It takes readers through some of the most exciting questions in cosmology, such as what evidence do we have that the Universe started from the Big Bang? Has dark matter been observed? Will we ever know what dark energy is? Are the multiverses real? And could the Universe be a hologram? 

This book is an ideal guide for anyone interested in finding out more about our Universe. It will be of interest to those studying cosmology for the first time, including readers without a scientific background, who have an interest in looking up at the stars and wondering where they all came from!

Key features: 

  • Contains the latest evidence for the Big Bang, dark matter, and dark energy and explores exciting scientific ideas, such as inflation and multiverses
  • Provides a clear explanation of the main theories of how the Universe evolved based on key observations – the Cosmological Clues
  • Gives the reader a concise introduction to the scientific process, using cosmology as the example, and explores why it has been so successful in creating the technologies we have today