Summer Research Experience at the ICG

March 1, 2016 By Karen Masters

ICG offers a variety of research experience placements aimed at providing experience of working as an academic research scientist to students ranging in age from Year 10 to final year undergraduates.

Applications are now open for all of our schemes, with deadlines for applications across the next two months (11th March for the Nuffield Scheme for Y12 students; 13th March for the Ogden Trust Scheme open to Ogden Alumni; 31st March for SEPnet and internally funded undergraduate research placements, and finally 29th April for our Y10 work experience week). For more details on eligibility or how to apply for any of these scheme please visit our research experience placements page.

To give an idea of the kind of experience you will have, here is a summary of the placements we hosted during the summer of 2015.

Students (front) and supervisors at the 2015 Summer Research Placement Symposium.

Students (front) and supervisors at the 2015 Summer Undergraduate Research Placement Symposium.

SEPnet and Internal Undergraduate Placements

Anna Laws (Southampton University) worked with ICG postdoc, Kyle Westfall on a project given the title of “The power spectrum of non-circular motions in disc galaxies“. Anna used data from the SDSS project MaNGA to investigate the dynamics of nearby galaxies. Anna won one of the six poster prizes at the student expo, and she and Kyle are still working on a publication from this work. When asked to describer her placement, Anna said “It was a good experience working in a research department at a University as I was able to get a good idea what it’s like to be a researcher”.
Steve Cunnington (Southampton Uni) who worked with ICG postdoc, Thomas Collett on a project, “Using gravitational lenses to measure the expansion of the Universe”. A very advanced draft of a paper based on this project exists. Steve told us, “I knew very little about astronomy before I started the project, but my time at ICG has given be the confidence to pursue further study in cosmology”.
Sarunas Verner (Southampton Uni) worked with ICG postdoc, Jeremy Sakstein on “Disformal Gravity Theories: A Jordan Frame Analysis”, and their paper based on this work was published in the Physical Review D.

Ogden Placements

Alex Todd (now in his 1st year Physical Science in Bath), worked with Karen Masters on “Quantifying the Effect of Image Depth on Morphological Classification of Galaxies”
Peter Thomas (now in his 2nd year Physics at Lancaster Uni) worked with Matt Hull and Jeremy Sakstein on “Cosmology in alternate theories of gravity”
Robert Vallance (now in his final year of Physics at Manchester) worked with Thomas Tram and Vincent Venin on “Testing Inflation in the Early Universe“
Taniya Parikh (who is now in her first year of a PhD with Daniel Thomas in the ICG) worked with Kyle Westfall and Daniel Thomas on “The internal motions of galaxies”.

Nuffield Placement

Joe Hind who is now in his final year at South Downs College worked with ICG PhD student, Tom Melvin, and his supervisor Dr. Karen Masters on a project looking into how visual morphologies in Galaxy Zoo depend on the filter of the image they’re taken in.

Schools (Y10) Work Experience Week

Finally, five young people from schools all over the Portsmouth area spent a week in the department in late June, working on projects which varied from calculating the motion of projectiles in different gravity models, to investigating the cosmic microwave background, or measuring the population of stars in a cluster.

Schools work experience participants and supervisors.

We hope you will consider applying for one of these schemes and spending some time with us this summer.

We welcome applications from all qualified applicants, but applications are particularly encouraged from traditionally under-represented groups in science. The University of Portsmouth holds an Athena SWAN bronze award and is an Institute of Physics Project Juno Supporter; these projects show a commitment to introduce organisational and cultural practices that promote gender equality in science and create a better working environment for men and women.

ICG astronomer in award-winning TV documentary

November 27, 2015 By Bob Nichol

Earlier this year, ICG astronomer Bob Nichol was featured as part of the BBC Horizon show entitled “Dancing in the Dark: The End of Physics?” The programme examined the search for dark matter and included Nichol’s trip to both the Dark Energy Survey at CTIO and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at ESO.

The show won the “Best TV Science Documentary” at the 2015 European Science TV & New Media Festival and Awards in Lisbon on November 25th 2015. The award was accepted by the director Peter Leonard who tweeted “Our Horizon on dark matter wins best tv doc at Euro science awards. Thanks team!”. The award is shown below.

See main news item on the University of Portsmouth webpage

Igniting Curiosity with the ICG Astrodome

November 11, 2015 By Karen Masters

Last Friday, ICG participated in the annual “Bright Sparks” day, hosted by the Portsmouth Grammar School. This is organized to be an exciting day of fun and discovery aimed at specially selected Y2 and Y4 students (age 6/7 and 8/9) from Primary and Junior Schools across the city.

ICG has participated in this event for the last 3 years, taking our Astrodome along to run a session for the Y4 pupils. This year, the dome was run by Dr. Karen Masters, with help from two of Portsmouth’s physics undergraduates – 3rd year Charlotte Lister, and 1st year Wiktoria Kedziora.

Wiktoria, Charlotte and Karen with the ICG astrodome at the Bright Sparks event.

Passing through the dome were four Y4 children and a teacher from each of the following local schools (which represent a mixture of independent and state run schools from across the city): St Jude’s CofE Primary, St John’s Rowlands Castle, Copnor Junior, Lyndhurst Junior, Churcher’s, Highbury, Langstone, Castle Primary, Portsmouth Grammar Juniors, Milton Park, Wimbourne and Fernhurst.

We collected feedback from these children, asking them “What was their favourite part”, and “What did you learn”. The below wordl shows the collected responses.

World of Feedback from Bright Sparks Astrodome shows

We finished off a busy day by running two further shows for groups of PGJS students, from both Y5 and Y6.

Any teachers interested in booking our astrodome (which we normally target for secondary school visits) can see more details of this and our other schools outreach here; to book contact ICG Outreach Officer Jen Gupta (jennifer.gupta ‘at’ port.ac.uk). ICG members interested in learning how to run astrodome shows should also contact Jen.

First Astrodome outing of the new academic year

October 27, 2014 By Jen Gupta

On Friday 17th October, the ICG Outreach Officer, Dr Jen Gupta, and PhD Student Outreach Rep, Jimmy Tarr, took the Portsmouth Astrodome to Charter Academy for its first outing of the new academic year. Pupils from years 7-11 attended shows inside the Astrodome, where they watched the fulldome movie We Are Astronomers (a production of NSC Creative) and found out what they could see in the night sky in a presenter-led show using stellarium.

The Portsmouth Astrodome at Charter Academy

During the coming months the Portsmouth Astrodome will be going to a wide range of events, from the ICG’s A-level Cosmology Masterclass to the primary school event Stargazing for Schools at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. There are still opportunities available for secondary schools to book a visit by the Astrodome so please contact Dr Jen Gupta if you are interested.

The Portsmouth Astrodome is part of the ICG’s outreach and public engagement programme which includes a wide range of activities and events for all ages. For more information please see the ‘for the public’ pages on our website.

A Physics Teacher’s View of Visiting ICG

June 6, 2014 By Karen Masters

For size weeks this summer (Monday June 2nd-Friday July 11th), ICG is playing host to Physics Teacher, Mr Jeremy Thomas from Portsmouth Grammar School. While he his here Mr Thomas will help review the ICG outreach activities, participate in some events which are happening during this time, and will also work on his own research project.

On his school blog this week, Jeremy writes about what it’s been like spending his first week with us.

Postcard from the Edge of the Universe.

2014 ICG/SEPNet Student Outreach Award

May 19, 2014 By Karen Masters

We are pleased to announce that the 2014 ICG/SEPnet Postgraduate Student Outreach Award is awarded to David Wilkinson, for his significant involvement and leadership of outreach activities during his time at ICG, especially since he became the ICG Student Outreach Representative (Jan 2013). As well as participating in many of the ICG outreach events, David has played a key role in helping to develop and plan activities to build a coherent outreach and public engagement program at ICG, and has also played an important role in training less experienced PhD students in delivery of outreach.

David hopes to use his prize in both an outreach and a research capacity, highlighting the benefits and importance of outreach for skills training and professional development for researchers, particularly for PhD students. He plans to draw on his experiences of outreach at the ICG to raise the profile of outreach as a useful training experience among researchers.

As David is now just under a year from the end of his PhD he has decided to step down from his formal outreach role to focus on his research. We are therefore looking for the next Student Outreach Representative. Interested candidates should talk to Jen and/or Karen.

ICG Led Workshop on the ‘Maths of the Universe’ is the favourite at the Royal Institution Maths Masterclass

May 9, 2014 By Karen Masters

ICG outreach officer Dr. Jen Gupta, contributed a workshop on “The Mathematics of the Universe” for the Royal Institution Mathematics Masterclass for Hampshire, held at Southampton University in March. Pupil’s attending the workshop calculated the number of galaxies in the Universe based on the number observed in the Hubble Deep Field and the size of that compared to the entire sky.

The children voted the workshop their favourite for the series, and their opinions of the event are summarised in the below wordl.

Stargazing for Schools a huge success

February 4, 2014 By Jen Gupta

In January primary school pupils joined cosmologists from the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation for a day of stargazing and navigation at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. Organised by the ICG and the HMS Warrior 1860 Education Team, ‘Stargazing for Schools’ took place at Action Stations and on board HMS Warrior 1860 on Wednesday 22 January 2014 and saw 169 pupils from schools in Portsmouth, Fareham, Gosport and Havant take part in a variety of workshops.

ICG members Edd Edmondson, Jen Gupta and Rita Tojeiro joined forces with Sam Connolly, Chris Frohmaier and Sadie Jones from the University of Southampton to run three activities, including shows in the University of Portsmouth’s new Astrodome. The other workshops looked at the size of the planets in the solar system using play-doh, and how astronomers use spectra to work out what stars are made of. Elsewhere pupils explored historic and modern navigation with the learning teams from HMS Warrior 1860 and the National Museum of the Royal Navy and found out more about the solar system with the Hampshire Astronomical Group.

The event was a resounding success, with one teacher commenting that it was “…a fantastic day. It had just the right mix of awe and wonder as well as factual information and practical work. All the children were talking so much about all the different things they had learnt and enjoyed”. Photographs from the day featured in The Portsmouth News on Wednesday 29 January as well as on their website.

Stargazing for Schools was the latest in a series of collaborations between the ICG and HMS Warrior 1860. Previous events have included tie-ins with the BBC Stargazing Live programme in 2014 and 2013, and a day themed around the Transit of Venus in 2012.

Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation