Imperial
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More events: me and my friends
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A quick heads-up on some recent and upcoming events: A couple of weeks ago, I delivered my long-delayed (if not actually long-awaited) inaugural lecture, “The Random Universe“. A video is currently available through Imperial College’s media library so you can hear me opine on how we learn about the history and evolution of the Universe…
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The Sensual Universe: Touch
Imperial Astrophysics is sponsoring a new series of public lectures, “The Sensual Universe: Astrophysics for the Five Senses”. The first will concentrate on touch: The Impact of Sex In Space, presented by Dr Saralyn Mark (and unlike most of us around with a “Dr” in front of our names, Dr Mark really is an MD).…
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ICIC
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Among the many other things I haven’t had time to blog about, this term we opened the new Imperial Centre for Inference and Cosmology, the culmination of several years of expansion in the Imperial Astrophysics group. In mid-March we had our in-house grand opening, with a ribbon-cutting by the group’s most famous alumnus. Statistics and…
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Good Cause #1: Imperial Students Power the Developing World
I try not to ask too much of my readers, but this post and the next are about a couple of worthwhile causes I’ve come across of late. The first project is the BBC World Challenge competition, supporting “social entrepreneurs”, grassroots projects making an impact in the developing world. One of the twelve finalists, e.quinox,…
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Anonymous Comments
We get most of the official feedback on our teaching through a mechanism called SOLE — Student On-Line Evaluations — which asks a bunch of questions on the typical “Very Poor” … “Very Good” scale. I’ve written about my results before — they are useful, and there is even some space for ad-hoc comments, but…
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Training Scientists: What’s the Point?
My colleagues and I spend what is probably an inordinate amount of time complaining about the occasional lapses of the basic skills of our students, their inability to take notes, their obsession with marks and what’s going to be on the exams. Because, like everyone else, we like to complain. But pretty often I get…
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O SOLE Mio
I just received the SOLE (Student On-Line Evaluation) results for my cosmology course. Overall, I was pleased: averaging between “good” and “very good” for “the structure and organisation of the lectures”, “the approachability of” and “the interest and enthusiasm generated by” the lecturer, as well as for “the support materials” (my lecture notes), although only…
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Teaching Cosmology
I’ve just finished teaching my eleven-week winter-term Cosmology course at Imperial. Like all lecturing, it was exhilerating, and exhausting. And like usual, I am somewhat embarrassed to say that I think I understand the subject better than when I started out. (I hope that the students can say some of the same things. Comments from…
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Big Questions: Spaceflight
In one of my earliest memories, I’m about four years old, at nursery school, sitting on the floor looking up at what must have been a small black and white television sitting on a table. The teachers were all terribly excited, and we little kids were always happy to watch television. But this wasn’t Sesame…
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On the Dark Side?
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A few weeks ago, I took part in a “Big Questions” debate with Subir Sarkar, a colleague from Oxford, on Dark Energy and the Fate of the Universe. For those of you who couldn’t attend, a related podcast is available, you can download my meagre slides, and it’s been mentioned on Physics World, as well…
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