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Institute of Physics, Communicators Conference
November 2022
The IOP hosted a one-day conference on Science Communication in their London headquarters. I gave a talk on our work and successes in Oriel Science.
Seattle Workshop
October 2022
I was invited to attend the Institute of Nuclear Theoary workshop in Seattle on Heavy Flavour Production in Heavy Ion Collisions. It was great to be back in that wonderful city. I gave a talk and enjoyed interacting with the participants.
INTERACT conference, Cardiff
September 2022
The STFC Research Council’s annual public engagement conference was held in Cardiff. It was great to network with other science communicator colleagues from around the UK.
Lattice2022 Conference in Bonn
August 2022
The annual international conference this year was held in Germany. I attended and gave a talk on our recent research on thermal effects in the strong interaction of particle physics.
Hadronic Parity Nonconservation conference, Seattle
January 2022
Our FASTSUM collaboration has done ground-breaking work on the masses of the parity partners of hadrons. We’ve shown how these partners of light baryons become degenerate as temperature increases.
Spectral Properties from Euclidean Path Integrals conference, Trento
September 2021
It was great to give an update on our collaboration’s research at this specialist conference hosted by ECT* in Trento. Again, my attendance was virtual (unfortunately).
Hadrons2021 conference, Mexico City
July 2021
I gave an invited talk to the Hadrons conference which was a hybrid affair - and unfortunately, I attended via zoom.
Merthyr Science Festival
July 2021
I was delighted to give a talk at the Merthyr Science Festival for the second time. Unfortunately it was via zoom, but I’m really impressed with the Festival - all credit to the great job that the festival organisers have done.
ORIEL SCIENCE OPENS !!
May 2021
After an 18 months Covid delay, Oriel Science proudly opened the doors to the public on 22nd May 2021. Since then many thousands of public visitors and students on organised school trips have experienced 30 exhibits showcasing Swansea University research.
New Oriel Science Venue!
December 2020
In some of the biggest news in ages, the Oriel Science has been working hard since September to build our new city centre venue at 21-22 Castle Street, Swansea. We are now ready to open to the public and just await the COVID regulations to allow this to happen.
Irish Computing Grant
September 2020
It was great to be involved with a successful ICHEP Irish High Performance Computing grant, led by colleagues in Ireland, which will optimising our software for the new generation of accelerator based architectures, principally GPU’s.
Wye Valley River Festival
September 2020
The Wye Valley River Festival is a cultural festival which moved on-line as a result of the pandemic. I gave my talk using a combination of pre-recorded video, filmed on a hill overlooking Swansea Bay and in my home, followed by a live Q & A session.
Super Science Swansea
March 2020
Our third annual “Super Science Swansea” festival was held in the Waterfront Museum. It was a wonderful success, and it turned out to be our last event before the COVID pandemic closed down many public events.
Research and Innovation Award
January 2020
Wow! Oriel Science wins its first award - a Swansea University Research and Innovation Award for public engagement. It’s great for the Oriel Science Team to have this recognition from the University.
UKRI Citizen Science Grant
December 2019
I was delighted that an Oriel Science application for the UKRI Citizen Science “Exploration Grant”. This will enable us to run three citizen science projects based out of our planned city-centre venue.
Darmstadt Workshop
December 2019
Not long before Christmas, I was invited to attend the workshop “Quarkonium in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC” at the GSI Darmstadt lab in Germany. I presented our FASTSUM research using Bayesian approaches to extracting spectral functions for hadrons at non-zero temperature.
British Science Festival
September 2019
The 2019 British Science Festival was held in the University of Warwick and Coventry. I gave a public talk on “Particle Physics for Sports Fans” at this event and invited audience members to try their hand at Australian Rules Football, all for the progress of science.
Merthyr Science Festival
July 2019
I was really pleased to give a talk at the first ever Merthyr Science Festival organised by Dr Claire Price. I gave my “Time - What a Concept” talk and got audience members up to “age” by wearing grey wigs…
Strange Quark Matter Conference
June 2019
In another European-hosted conference, I gave a plenary talk at the “Strange Quark Matter” International Conference held in Bari, Italy. I presented our FASTSUM collaboration’s recent work on “Hyperons” (baryons containing at least one strange quark) and “Bottomonium” states (mesons containing two bottom quarks).
Torino Workshop
May 2019
I was invited to attend the “Quarkonium Working Group” workshop in Torino, Italy. My first time to this beautiful city mostly made famous by the film “The Italian Job”, but it may have also been involved with the creation of the modern Italian state.
DiRAC Computing Grant
April 2019
The FASTSUM collaboration was awarded a DiRAC STFC High Performance Computing Grant of 310 million core-hours on the Tesseract supercomputer based in the University of Edinburgh. We will use this time to investigate the strong interaction at high temperatures and (small but) non-zero densities.
London Science Museum
March 2019
I gave a public talk on “Time - What a Concept” at the London Science Museum in an evening session. The talk was repeated three times and the auditorium was full each time. I explored the physics of time and how we all have a bit of Einstein’s Relativity equations in our mobile phones - essential for the proper functioning of GPS.
Super Science Swansea
March 2019
Our second “Super Science Swansea” event showcasing Swansea University’s research was held in the Waterfront. Again, this was an outstanding success. In just 5 hours, we had around 3,500 people attending.
Explore Your Universe
January 2019
I was asked to join the Board of the Association of Science and Discovery Centres’ (ASDC) “Explore Your Universe” project. This has oversight on the STFC-funded grants to UK science centres designed to increase diversity in participation and is a wonderful opportunity to gain experience and to hopefully contribute.
Munich Workshop
September 2018
I was invited to attend a two-week workshop in the Technical University of Munich on “Probing the Quark-Gluon Plasma with Collective Phenomena and Heavy Quarks”. It was a very useful trip for both research collaboration and to present our FASTSUM results.
Graduation of Dr Davide De Boni
July 2018
My fifth PhD student, David De Boni, graduated with his doctorate at the ceremony held in Swansea University’ Great Hall. Davide worked with me on the spectrum of baryons at non-zero temperature as well as doing his own research in Open Quantum Systems.
SEWM Conference
June 2018
Continuing my European conference adventures, I attended the “Strong and Electroweak Matter” conference in Barcelona, Spain. It was held in the spectacular CosmoCaixa science exhibition.
Quark Matter Conference
May 2018
I was selected to present our FASTSUM Collaboration’s recent work at the international “Quark Matter” conference held on the Lido in Venice, Italy. The venue is used for the annual Venice Film Festival, but there were no Hollowood stars attending this conference.
Welsh Government Grant
May 2018
The Welsh Government have awarded Oriel Science funding as part of its “Enhancing Civic Mission and Community Engagement” fund. We will use this to fund our project as we continue to run events in the community and build towards our future city-centre venue.
Super Science Swansea
March 2018
Oriel Science held its first ever “Super Science Swansea” even on March 10th 2018. A couple of dozen Swansea University research groups showcased their research in the Waterfront Museum to more than 3,000 visitors.
Oriel Science SPARK Grant
January 2018
Oriel Science have been awarded an STFC SPARK public engagement award. We will use this grant to help make our future city centre venue a place where the public and school students engage more with science research, inspiring the Next Generation into STEM careers.
Public Engagement Fellowship
January 2018
The STFC has awarded me a Leadership Fellowship in Public Engagement. This three-year fellowship will free me from most of my teaching duties and enable me to spend more time working on Oriel Science.
Oriel Science Pop-Up closes
June 2017
After 100 opening days in which had 16,000 public visitors and nearly 1,000 students on organised school visits, our Oriel Science Pop-up exhibition centre closed. Our visitor statistics proved that Oriel Science was welcoming to all corners of the community and the feedback we received has inspired us to re-establish a future city centre venue.
FASTSUM Computing Grant
April 2017
Our FASTSUM collaboration won a PRACE High Performance Computing grant for 19million core-hours on the Marconi KNL, Cineca Supercomputing Centre, Italy.
Opening of Oriel Science!
September 2016
September 10 was an extremely important date. Our brand-new Oriel Science Pop-up exhibition opens in Princess Way in Swansea’s city centre. It was opened by George Abbey, former Director of NASA’s Johnson Space Centre and provides our first platform to Showcase Science in the Community.
Leiden Workshop
September 2016
In the Lorentz Centre, in Leiden, The Netherlands, there was a multi-day workshop titled “Tomography of the quark-gluon plasma with heavy quarks” . I was invited to attend and present our recent work.
Quark Confinement Conference
August 2016
I was invited to be a convenor of a session of the “Quark Confinement” conference. This year it was held in the Greek city Thessaloniki.
Lab-in-a-Lorry
April 2016
For a second time I volunteered to demonstate the experiments in the
Lab-in-a-Lorry,
the Institute of Physics interactive (mobile!) outreach laboratory.
This time lab was based in Queen Elizabeth High School, Carmarthen and a whole
day's worth of high school students from years 7 upwards visted.
PRACE Computing Grant
March 2016
The European organisation which funds high performance computing, PRACE, awarded
our FASTSUM Collaboration 23 million core-hours on the Cineca BlueGene/Q
Supercomputer in Italy.
Oriel Science
March 2016
On the 4th March 2016, I launched
Oriel Science
which is a science exhibition centre which will host thematic, interactive
displays on topics across the sciences. These will show case the science
research in the University and will open during the British Science Festival
in September 2016.
CERN Computing
February 2016
I was appointed the UK's representative on CERN's
Computing Resources Scrutiny Board. This body receives the requests
for computing resources from each of the Large Hadron Collider's
Experiments and reports to the National Research Agencies who decide
on the actual funding.
Workshop for teachers visiting CERN
12 February 2016
Each year the Welsh Education Department, the
National STEM Centre and
Lyn Evans organise a trip to CERN for Welsh Physics teachers.
It is always very successful and has inspired teachers to
take their school students back to CERN for subsequent visits.
This year, the Swansea Physics Department hosted a special workshop
for the visiting teachers which included
lectures on particle physics and antimatter research
to prepare them for their visit.
High Performance Computing Grant
December 2015
The STFC-funded DiRAC High Performance Computing grants were announced and the
FASTSUM Collaboration was awarded 407 Million core-hours of time on the BlueGene/Q
supercomputer hosted in Edinburgh.
Physics Christmas Lectures
December 2015
Each year the Department of Physics hosts several hundred high school students for our Christmas Lectures in the Taliesin Lecture over two days. I chose the lecturers, Dr Yvette Hancock and our own Prof Niels Madsen.Visiting Fellow, All Souls Oxford
September - December 2015
For the Michaelmas Term in 2015 I held a Visiting
Fellowship in All Souls College, Oxford. There are nine such fellows
at any one time from across all disciplines including those in public
service such as parliamentarians.
Workshop on Lattice Field Theory
July 2015
I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend and present a research talk at
the 5th International Workshop on Lattice Hadron Physics. This workshop involved
lattice researchers from around the world.
International Lattice Symposium
July 2015
The
33rd International Lattice Symposium was held in Kobe, Japan. I gave a
talk on our recent baryon parity studies.
Research Seminar in M\"unich
April 2015
I was invited to give a research seminar at the Technical University of
M\"unich and gave a talk on our FASTSUM Collaboration's recent work. Because
my PhD student was visiting Trento, in northern Italy, I used this opportunity
to visit him there.
Heavy Quark Physics in Heavy-Ion collisions
16-20 March 2015
The ECT* Centre in Trento hosted a workshop on
Heavy Quark Physics in Heavy-Ion collisions:
experiments, phenomenology and theory
to which I was invited to present a talk on our recent
work on the charmonium potentials and the spectral functions
of heavy meson systems.
Royal Society Heavy Quark Meeting
28-29 January 2015
I was a co-organiser of a Royal Society workshop on
Heavy Quarks
held at Chicheley Hall.
This included around 20 invited participants from Europe and North America
and brought together experts in both zero- and non-temperature lattice
simulations of heavy quarks.
Graduation of Dr Wynne Evans
27 January 2015
My fourth PhD student, Wynne Evans, graduated with his doctorate at
the ceremony held in the Brangwyn Hall.
Wynne worked with me on the interactions of quarks in charmonium mesons at
non-zero temperature.
He then took up a research position at the University of Bern.
Gregynog Level M Residential Trip
22-26 January 2015
As part of the 4th year teaching programme to our M.Phys. students,
we arranged a residential trip to
Gregynog Hall.
This was organised by colleagues from Cardiff and comprised of
4th year students from Aberystwyth, Cardiff and Swansea Universities.
DiRAC Research Award
5 January 2015
Our FASTSUM Collaboration was again successful in receiving a
supercomputer grant from the
DiRAC Consortium
of 72M core hours (for 3rd year running).
REF2014
18 December 2014
The Research Excellence Framework results came out with Swansea Physics
being ranked 12th out of 41 Physics Departments by the Times Higher Education
Supplement's
Research Intensity rankings.
Joint IOP/IET Public Lecture
20 November 2014
Dr Dewi Lewis gave the annual joint
IOP/IET lecture
in Swansea University.
His talk, which I helped arranged, was titled Radiation Science -
a Technology Platform for the HealthCare Industry
and explained the amazing developments in medical imaging technology.
Lab in a Lorry (IOP)
18 November 2014
In the Swansea Valley High School,
Ysgol Gyfun in Ystalyfera, I volunteered to be a
Lab in a Lorry
demonstrator explaining the wonders of fibre optics to (mostly!) eager
students.
Quarkonium 2014 Working Group, CERN
10-14 November 2014
The 2014 Quarkonium working group held a well-attended
workshop
in CERN. I gave an invited talk on our Collaboration's recent work.
Seattle Workshop
22 September - 3 October 2014
In the autumn, I was invited to attend the INT workshop in Seattle on
Heavy Flavour and EM Probes in Heavy Ion Collisions.
It was wonderful to spend two weeks in the city and gained a great deal
from the talks and discussions in the workshop.
Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum Conference
8-12 September 2014
In the
Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum Conference
held in St Petersburg, I was a convenor for a session on
"deconfinement". It was great to be back in St Petersburg - the city
has changed a lot in 20 years!
Leverhulme Fellowship
1 September 2014
I was very fortunate to be awarded a
Leverhulme Fellowship
which will allow me to spend two years on research away from teaching
and administration duties.
IoP Science Board
11 June 2014
My last meeting as a member of the Science Board of the
Institute of Physics was today. I immensely enjoyed this opportunity to
help guide our professional body's Science Policy.
SET for Britain Judge
17 March 2014
Again I was asked to judge the annual
SET for Britain event which is held at the Houses of Parliament, London.
This gives the opportunity for young scientists to display their research
to parliamentarians via posters to both enhance their own profile, and to
(try to) explain Science, Engineering and Technology to MP's.
Honorary Degree to Tony Hey
24 January 2014
Swansea University awarded an honorary degree to
Prof Tony Hey, Vice
President of Microsoft with responsibilities for its research collborations
with Universities globally.
Tony, a former theoretical particle physicist whose father grew up in Swansea
and was a student here,
also gave a University Colloquium on
The Fourth Paradigm: Particle Physics, Astronomy, Jim Gray and Open Access.
Annual Theory Meeting
16-18 December 2013
The
Annual Theory Meeting
was held again at the
IPPP in Durham University.
Warmer than in previous years it was a great chance to get some understanding
of current research trends outside my own area in theoretical particle physics.
3 Minute Wonder Competition
11 December 2013
I was a judge of this competition where young researchers explained their
research to a lecture room of discerning high school students.
It was held as part of the
Annual Christmas Lecture
in Cardiff University.
REF2014
29 November 2013
The
Research Excellence Framework
exercise submission date was today.
REF is the system for "assessing the quality of research in UK HE institutions".
I was the Department's lead in the
"Impact" category of this exercise,
something I tell myself I enjoyed...
Research Seminar, Liverpool
20 November 2013
I gave an
invited seminar
in the University of Liverpool's
Theoretical Physics Group.
The topic of the talk was on our recent results from lattice simulations of
the quark-gluon plasma.
Science of Armageddon
14 November 2013
The
Insitution of Engineering and Technology
and Institute of Physics
held a
joint public lecture
on the possibility of the earth suffering a devasting meteorite strike.
The speaker was Jay Tate, the Director of the
Space Guard Centre.
IOP Science Board
25 October 2013
The Institute of Physics Science Board
meets regularly in London throughout the year to set the science
policy of the IOP and to respond to expert calls of evidence from
parliamentary committees. I've been a member of this committee for a
number of years and have enjoyed it immensely.
DiRAC Resources Allocation Committee
21 October 2013
I'm a member of the Committee which awards time on the
STFC DiRAC high
performance computing facility. This committee met in London today to
decide the allocation for the coming year.
DiRAC Day
23 September 2013
The High Performance Computing facility,
DiRAC
held a
workshop
in the University of Leicester. This was an opportunity for computer users
to learn about the research done by other consortia within the DiRAC.
As well as presenting a talk, I judged the poster competition held in the afternoon.
Hartree BlueGene/Q award
5 August 2013
The
Hartree Centre in STFC's Daresbury Lab awarded
our collaboration 10 million core-hours of computer time on their
IBM BlueGene/Q system.
This computer is currently the most powerful in the UK.
We will use this to perform simulations of the quark-gluon plasma phase
of matter.
31st International Lattice Symposium
29 July - 3 August 2013
The annual lattice
field theory conference was held in Mainz, Germany. Our
collaboration presented five oral presentations and one poster, all
related to work on the phenomenology of the strong interation
above the deconfining transition temperature.
Strangeness in Quark Matter Conference
22-27 July 2013
I gave an invited plenary
talk at the Strangeness in
Quark Matter conference, Birmingham, July 2013. This conference
combined both experimentalist and theoreticians who presented work on
the role of strange and heavy-flavour quarks in proton-proton and in
heavy-ion collisions, and in astrophysical phenomena.
PRACE High Performance Computing Grant
3rd July 2013
I presented the results of our work using the PRACE supercomputing award
in a meeting of their review panel in Brussels in July. This meeting was
held to discuss which computing awards would be rolled over onto the
next year. It was agreed that our project be again awarded 17.5
million core hours on the
BlueGene/Q supercomputer in CINECA, Italy from 1st November 2013.
SET for Britain Poster Competition
18th March 2013
SET for Britain runs an
annual poster competition for young scientists in the Houses of
Parliament. This is a perfect opportunity for science research to be
shown and explained to our law makers (and breakers!). I was a judge
in the physics section of this competition again and was, if anything,
even more impressed with the vast breadth of interesting physics
research displayed than the previous year!
IOP Accreditation
20th February 2013
The Institute of Physics regularly
accredits the teaching provision in UK Physics Departments. Our
Department was visited by the IOP accreditation team in February and I
oversaw this visit and the associated application. We were very
pleased when our degree schemes were approved for accreditation.
Workshop on Quark-Gluon Plasma
30th January 2013
I attended and gave an invited seminar to the workshop The
Phase Diagram of Stronly Interacting Matter in the University of
Liverpool. This was funded by the Institute of Physics and included
experimentalists working in heavy-ion collision experiments, together
with theorists including even string theorists.
DiRAC STFC High Performance Computing Grant
6th November 2012
The DiRAC
consortium has awarded our
"Hot and Dense" (aka Extreme) QCD collaboration 200M core hours
of computer time on the BlueGene/Q system based in Edinburgh. This
access began on 1st November 2012 and runs for 3 years. I am the
Principle Investigator of this grant.
PRACE High Performance Computing Grant
19th October 2012
The "Partnership for Advanced
Computing" PRACE
has awards of computer time on their (European-based) supercomputers.
Together with collaborators in Swansea and Ireland, we were successful
in gaining an award of 17.5 million core hours on
BlueGene/Q supercomputer in CINECA, Italy.
This access began on 1st November 2012 and runs for 12 months.
I am the Principle Investigator of this grant.
New Frontiers in Lattice Gauge Theory Workshop
10-14 September 2012
I attended this workshop in the Galileo Galilei Institute for
Theoretical Physics in Florence. I presented work done by my FASTSUM
collaborators (finite temperature bottomonium spectrum) and my PhD
student, Wynne Evans (inter-quark potential in charmonium systems at
high temperatures).
Lattice 2012 Conference
24-29 June 2012
The
Lattice 2012 International Symposium was held in Cairns in June
2012. I attended and presented a paper and was also a member of the
International Advisory Committee.
SET for Britain Poster Competition
12th March 2012
SET for Britain
recently ran a poster competition for young scientists which was held
in the Houses of Parliament. This is a perfect opportunity for science
research to be shown and explained to our law makers (and breakers!).
I was a judge in the physics section of this competition and was
genuinely impressed with the vast breadth of interesting physics
research displayed, especially since I was a participant in this
competition more than a decade ago when I was a "young" scientist
myself!
Swansea Science Cafe
Friday 27th January 2012
The
Swansea Science Cafe has been awarded £500 as part of the
College of Science's recently announced EPSRC "Pathways to Impact"
Research Awards. This money will be used to fund speakers
from further abroad than we've managed to thus far.
Together with Ed Pope,
I organise this Science Cafe.
Workshop on Physics and Computation
27th January 2012
The College of Science Research Committee has recently announced that
it has awarded the Workshop on Physics and Computation £5,970.
This will enable world-leading experts from around the world to be
invited to give research presentations at the workshop. The Physics
and Computation Workshop will be held in Swansea from 28-31 August
2012. It is being jointly hosted by the Departments of Computer
Science, Mathematics and Physics. I am on the local organising
committee of this workshop.
Stargazing Live
16th January 2012
In January 2012, the BBC again showed
three programmes on stargazing
hosted by Prof Brian Cox and Dara O Briain.
As part of this series, several local events were held where members of the public
could attend talks by physicists and look through telescopes at the planets and stars.
I was involved with the
Stargazing Event in Llanelli
in the Wetlands Centre.
GridPP Network Infrastructure Grant
Friday 13th January 2012
The Swansea node of the GridPP
Collaboration has recently been awarded £29,500 to
upgrade the network connection from
our QCDgrid
node to JANET. This will ensure that
our UKQCD Collaboration's data can be
transferred between the datagrid nodes efficiently. I am the PI of
this grant.
Clickers Workshop
7th December 2011
I was recently awarded £280 to attend the Higher Education
Academy's course on the use of ``clickers''. These are hand-held
devices that students can use to give live feedback during
lectures. The
Clickers Reloaded Workshop was held in Edinburgh University, 7th
December 2012.
PRACE High Performance Computing Grant
21st October 2011
The "Partnership for Advanced
Computing" PRACE
has awards of computer time on their (European-based) supercomputers.
Together with collaborators in Swansea and Ireland, we were successful
in gaining an award of 23 million core-hours on the supercomputer
JUGENE.
This access began on 1st November 2011 and runs for 10 months.
I am the PI of this grant.
Quarkonia in Deconfined Matter
28-30th September 2011
I attended the EMMI workshop on
Quarkonia in Deconfined Matter
which was held in Acitrezza, Sicily (in the foothills of Mt Etna).
At this conference I presented work done by my PhD student, Wynne Evans, and myself
on the inter-quark potential in charmonium systems at high temperatures.
This was the first time that this potential has been calculated.