Guest Speakers
The guest lectures are one important item on ICPS' schedule. We will have awesome physicists coming to Malta to present their exciting research in different fields of physics.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Dame (Susan) Jocelyn Bell Burnell, DBE, FRS, PRSE FRAS (born 15 July 1943) is a Northern Irish astrophysicist. As a postgraduate student, she discovered the first radio pulsars - the by-products of supernova explosions which make all life in the universe possible. Bell Burnell was President of the Royal Astronomical Society from 2002 to 2004, president of the Institute of Physics from October 2008 until October 2010, and was interim president by early 2011. Bell Burnell was elected President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in October 2014. In March 2013 she was elected Pro-Chancellor of the University of Dublin.
Mark McCaughrean
Prof Mark McCaughrean is Senior Science Advisor in the Directorate of Science at the European Space Agency. He is also responsible for communicating results from ESA’s astronomy, heliophysics, planetary, and fundamental physics missions to the scientific community and wider general public. Following a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, he worked at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre, followed by astronomical institutes in Tucson, Heidelberg, Bonn, and Potsdam, and taught as a professor of astrophysics at the University of Exeter before joining ESA in 2009. His personal scientific research involves observational studies of the formation of stars and their planetary systems, and he is also an Interdisciplinary Scientist for the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.
André Xuereb
Dr André Xuereb read for his undergraduate BSc degree in mathematics and physics at the University of Malta. In 2007 he started reading for a PhD in the UK studying laser cooling of atoms at the University of Southampton, following which he spent some time as a post-doctoral researcher in Hanover in 2011. From 2011 to 2014 he was a fellow of the Royal Commission of the Exhibition of 1851, working closely with the Belfast quantum technologies group. In late 2014 he was awarded a faculty position in quantum optics and quantum information at the University of Malta. His current interests span from fundamental and technological applications of optomechanics through to quantum thermodynamics.
Alessio Magro
Dr Alessio Magro is a resident lecturer with the Institute of Space Sciences and Astronomy (ISSA) at the University of Malta. After reading for his undergraduate degree in Information and Communications Technology, he spent a year working in the software industry, after which he started his PhD with the Department of Physics at the University of Malta, working closely with the radio astronomy group at the University of Oxford, and spent and an additional year as a postdoc with the same department. His main research area is high performance software instrumentation for radio telescopes, primarily working on the Square Kilometer Array.
Anthony Galea
Dr Anthony Galea is a resident academic lecturer at the Physical Oceanography Research Group (Department of Geosciences) within the University of Malta. He got his Ph.D. in 'Environmental and Industrial Fluid Mechanics' from the University of Trieste, in Italy. His research involves the numerical modelling (LES and RANS) of coastal areas to decipher the in-harbour sea currents and the turbulent water mixing within bays. He is also interested in numerical modelling of coastal/regional areas, computational fluid mechanics, and operational oceanography, and is an avid kayaker.