Meet the people behind our MSc in High Performance Computing, which trains the next generation of computational science professionals.
The University’s first Postgraduate Virtual Open Week will take place from the 21st to the 25th of February. If you are interested in applying for the MSc in High Performance Computing at the School of Physics & Astronomy, this is a good opportunity to:
- Talk to staff from the MSc in HPC
- Discuss career opportunities and financial support
- Meet current students
Live sessions in the chat rooms and virtual space will allow you to talk to staff and current students about applying for the MSc, studying in the University, living in Edinburgh... and any other aspect of studying with us.
Registration
Registering now allows us to keep you informed about what’s happening, give you any technical help you may need, and make sure you have a chance to participate in the Open Week's events. See the link below.
Dr Alex Murphy, a Reader in the School's Nuclear Physics group, will be delivering a lecture on Dark Matter and Dark Energy as part of the University of Bath's Millennium Lectures series. The series forms part of the programme of the International Year of Chemistry.
- Venue Bath University
- Date February 9th 2011
- Summary 'The materials of the everyday world around us are composed of the chemical elements, in turn formed from atoms and their substructures. Yet when we examine the motions of stars and galaxies we are led to the remarkable conclusion that the energy content of the Universe as a whole is completely dominated by fundamentally different materials, dubbed "dark matter" and "dark energy". What is the evidence for this remarkable statement? What are these new entities? And can we prove they really do exist? Find out how an experiment deep in a potash mine near Whitby might be about to provide some of the answers.'
You can read more about the work in the Boulby potash mine in this article in the Mail On Sunday.
The 3 simulations in the gallery below were produced by the Millennium Project, with each showing slices of Dark Matter distribution. The slices through the density field are all 15 Mpc/h thick. Three panels are shown for each redshift: subsequent panels zoom in by a factor of four with respect to the previous ones.
Image gallery
A new 1-year foundation level course makes the School’s degree courses accessible to students whose qualifications have previously not been recognised by the University of Edinburgh.
The Integrated Foundation Programme will provide an entry point for many of the full degree programmes available in the College of Science and Engineering. This innovative programme will be integrated with the College’s first year of undergraduate study and so - unlike many other foundation programmes - does not mean an extra year of study.
Students will choose two subjects from among mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and engineering. An ‘English for academic purposes’ course – tailored for Science and Engineering students – will also be available.
After successful completion of the Programme, students will enter the second year of study alongside Degree students who have taken the standard first year.
"The Integrated Foundation Year is a new and most welcome access route for the best international students from a range of countries. We look forward to welcoming this new group to the University and the city."
Dr Will Hossack, Director of Teaching
Application to the Integrated Foundation Programme will be through the UCAS system.
To register an interest in applying for the Integrated Foundation Programme, please email foundation [at] ed.ac.uk with the following information about yourself:
• full name
• country of residence and nationality
• preferred area of study
• school or other qualifications held or being taken
Professor Richard Kenway has been appointed Chair of the PRACE Scientific Steering Committee (SSC).
PRACE is building a Europe-wide research infrastructure that will use the region’s most advanced computing technologies to support scientific breakthroughs across all disciplines. The Scientific Steering Committee advises the PRACE enterprise on all scientific and technical matters, with particular responsibility for overseeing the peer review process for the allocation of PRACE resources.
"We need to adopt a cross-disciplinary approach in which computer scientists, mathematicians and applications specialists work together."
Professor Kenway said: “The pursuit of scientific excellence above all else will be key to our success, both to justify continued investment by the PRACE partners and to ensure Europe remains competitive in exploiting strategically vital HPC technologies. We need to adopt a cross-disciplinary approach in which computer scientists, mathematicians and applications specialists work together. I foresee the gaps between disciplines closing as we tackle the big problems of science, and the exploitation of HPC technologies will be in the vanguard of this multi-disciplinary research.”
Professor Kenway is Head of the School of Physics & Astronomy, Tait Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Edinburgh and Chairman of EPCC.
Dr Peter Boyle of the particle physics theory research group in the Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics has worked with Columbia University and IBM's BlueGene team to design part of IBM's prize winning next-generation supercomputer processor.
An academic team from the Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics in the University of Edinburgh and from the Physics Department at Columbia University has collaborated with IBM (NYSE:IBM) over the last three years on the chip design of IBM's next generation BlueGene prototype computer in a unique industrial-academic collaboration.
This prototype has been judged the world's most energy efficient supercomputer taking first place on the Supercomputing 'Green500 List' for November 2010.
Both University of Edinburgh and Columbia University plan to use the system to advance quantum chromodynamics (QCD) simulations in their research of particle physics. The Edinburgh system is funded by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council and will be installed the the Advanced Computing Facility at the University of Edinburgh. The Columbia University design effort was carried out in partnership with the RIKEN BNL Research Center which, together with the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), will fund a system to be installed at BNL.
Dr Peder Norberg of the Institute for Astronomy (IfA) is among the Royal Society's 30 new University Research Fellows (URFs) for 2010. He has also been awarded a European Research Council Starting Grant (ERC StG).
The combined value of the awards is around €1.8million over approximately five years. Both awards are intended to support outstanding early-career researchers and enable them to carry out their pioneering ideas.
Peder's research aims to critically test the successful Cold Dark Matter model, and improve our knowledge of galaxy formation and Dark Energy. The ERC citation noted the IfA's strong record of research in this area.
Peder said: 'The combination of these awards presents a unique opportunity to establish myself as a true leader in my field and build a full research team to critically test the most successful cosmological model to date - the standard Cold Dark Matter model – and to provide key insights into the formation of galaxies over time. This frontier research utilizes the most recent galaxy surveys, including the Galaxy And Mass Assembly survey, of which I am Co-Project Leader, and the proprietary Pan-STARRS PS1 survey.'
Peder’s ERC Starting Grant is one of five awarded to the University this year and there are now three ERC grant holders at the IfA, making it unusually successful among astronomy institutes in this respect.
Below, Peder explains the background to his work.
ERC Starting Grants
ERC Starting Grants are prestigious awards which allow researchers in any subject (save nuclear research) who finished their PhD 2-12 years ago to undertake cutting-edge research at any European research institution. Awards last for up to 5 years and provide significant funding – up to EUR 1.5 million – to support the investigator and team. While the scheme is competitive, more cash is being invested in it each year by the European Commission.
Anyone in the School who would like to apply for ERC funding should first contact David Dougal at ERI: David.Dougal [at] ed.ac.uk Tel: 0131 650 9025
A universe filled with undetected cold dark matter and mysterious dark energy
Dr Peder Norberg
Galaxies are not distributed uniformly: they tend to clump together in groups and clusters. Our grasp of this distribution was revolutionised by the "Sloan Digital Sky Survey" (SDSS) and the "2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey", which mapped out the distances of millions of bright galaxies by measuring their redshift.
This key information on how galaxies are distributed in space contributed directly towards a standard model that describes the observed Universe, composed of three parts: ~5% ordinary matter; ~20% Cold Dark Matter (CDM), a theoretically motivated materia, yet to be directly detected; ~75% Dark Energy, a hypothetical form of energy filling the entire Universe. Hence we are faced with a real enigma as 95% of the content of the Universe is unknown to mankind. This drives my quest to further test the validity of the successful CDM model and to better understand what Dark Energy is.
Gama: a multi-wavelength and spectroscopic survey to test a key model prediction
The properties of CDM are accurately predicted via computer models. Dark Matter tends to cluster, forming large clumps (halos) connected by filaments, creating a so-called cosmic web. This is very similar to the observed distribution of galaxies. In this structure formation model, CDM becomes hence the natural skeleton on which galaxies form and evolve. The main problem is the lack of a distinct proof of its existence, including its non-detection in underground experiments.
I am a co-leader of the "Galaxy And Mass Assembly" (GAMA) redshift survey. GAMA will measure 400,000 new galaxy redshifts and provide a complete account of all galaxy positions in the nearby Universe. It is designed to provide a constraint to a key CDM model prediction, as given by the number of Dark Matter halos per unit volume as function of their mass. Our estimate will rely on counting the number of galaxy groups in GAMA and measuring their masses. Such analyses require the use of many state-of-the-art mock Universes, created from large CDM simulations populated with galaxies following either some galaxy formation recipe or some statistical framework calibrated on real GAMA data.
Pan-STARRS: a unique imaging survey to probe the properties of Dark Energy
Dark Energy, unlike CDM, is theoretically poorly understood and observationally its properties are barely constrained. This led to the construction of several gigantic galaxy surveys, including Pan-STARRS, with main cosmological aim to determine whether Dark Energy changes with time. To help answer that crucial question, my goal is to study the galaxy distribution in Pan-STARRS and quantify its degree of clumpiness at times when the Universe was just half its current age.
Unlike GAMA, Pan-STARRS is an imaging survey with approximate estimates of galaxy distances. Those photometric distances rely on observations at different wavelengths and extra input, like the composition of galaxies and stellar evolution. Their uncertainty and the planned survey sizes are such that new dedicated clustering techniques have to be developed to best extract the underlying signal. Within Pan-STARRS, I lead the group that considers these new statistics, with which we aim to characterise the relation between the observed galaxy light and the underlying mass over time. This work is a vital step towards measuring the evolution of Dark Energy.
The School of Physics and Astronomy has been awarded “Juno Practitioner” status by the Institute of Physics.
Project Juno recognises and rewards Physics departments and schools that address the under-representation of women in university Physics. It also encourages better working practices for both women and men. The “Juno Practitioner” award recognises the excellent work done by the School to apply the Juno programme’s principles.
Cait MacPhee, the School of Physics and Astronomy’s Juno Champion, said: “We are delighted that the IoP has awarded us Juno Practitioner status and we are eager to move forward to become Juno Champions.
“Our submission highlighted some areas of which we can be very proud, including increasing equality of representation in academic staff, and our higher-than-the-national-average proportions of women at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. We will focus now on career development for all staff and students, to ensure equality of opportunity for men and women at all stages of their career.”
The Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA) has given high priority to Project Juno, with all its partner institutions signing up to the Juno principles. Edinburgh and Glasgow universities have both now successfully achieved “Practitioner” status.
The five Juno principles are:
1) a robust organisational framework to deliver equality of opportunity and reward;
2) an appointment and selection processes and procedures that encourage men and women to apply for academic posts at all levels;
3) departmental structures and systems which support and encourage the career progression and promotion of all staff and enable men and women to progress and continue in their careers;
4) departmental organisation, structure, management arrangements and culture that are open, inclusive and transparent and encourage the participation of all staff;
5) flexible approaches and provisions that enable individuals, at all career and life stages, to optimise their contribution to their department, institution and to SET (science, engineering, technology and the built environment).
This talk explores major aspects of the life and work of Charles Piazzi Smyth: one of the best-known and most fascinating scientists in Victorian Edinburgh.
This talk explores major aspects of his life and work, focusing especially on Smyth's fascination with Egypt and Egyptology, a major fashion of nineteenth century Scottish culture and a vital element both in the arts and sciences of the period. Smyth's passion for Egypt, which brought him into violent conflict with the Royal Society of London and many other organisations, reveals much of what drove the sciences in the nineteenth century and the way they advanced.
The talk will feature some of Piazzi Smyth's original artefacts from the Museum's collections. There will also be a chance to see the Museum's slice-of-life character of Piazzi Smyth's (fictional) 2nd assistant.
This event is part of the UNDERSTANDING TECHNOLOGY series of public lectures, which presents leading international research and ideas in the history, philosophy, politics and sociology of technology.
Date:
Thursday, 11 November 2010
Time:
6pm
Venue
Early People Gallery, National Museums Scotland
Registration
Please register with Maureen Kerr on 0131 247 4274 or m.kerr [at] nms.ac.uk
Admission
Free and open to all
Speaker:
Professor Simon Schaffer
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge University
Event Type:
General Event
This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Prof. Andre Geimand and Dr Konstantin Novoselov from the University of Manchester, for their experimental isolation of graphene, a layer of graphite just 1 atom thick (KS Novoselov et al., Science 306, 666 (2004)).
This breakthrough consisted of depositing thin layers of graphite on silicon, then peeling successive atomic layers off with Scotch tape until only 1 layer remained. The technique produces a small number of crystals of monolayer graphene surrounded by a large number of thicker crystallites (see photo), but it was possible to identify the single atomic layers with the naked eye in an optical microscope, provided that the correct thickness of SiO2 had been deposited on the Silicon substrate.
The explosion of scientific interest in graphene which followed was due to its unique electronic bandstructure in which the electrons behave as massless Dirac Fermions, mimicking relativistic particles. The quantum Hall effect and ballistic transport have been observed in graphene at room temperature, leading to its development for a wide variety of applications in electronics. Its high surface-area-to-volume ratio and strength are leading to applications in materials science and surface science.
Recently, researchers from the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions (CSEC) and the School of Physics have been collaborating with Dr. Novoselov to produce the first study of graphene under hydrostatic pressure (JE Proctor, E Gregoryanz, KS Novoselov, M Lotya, JN Coleman and MP Halsall, Phys. Rev. B 80, 073408 (2009)).
The importance of this work lies in graphene’s potential applications in electronics (for which the changes to the electronic bandstructure caused by strain are important), and graphene’s proposed applications as an ultra-sensitive strain sensor.
The work is an example of the application of CSEC’s world-leading expertise in high pressure science to the study of novel and technologically important materials, to gain important and fundamental information about these materials.
The first major radio telescope to be built in Britain for decades was officially opened on 20th September.
Based at Chilbolton Observatory in Hampshire, the LOFAR-UK telescope will use simple dipole antennas to ‘listen’ to the Universe at FM frequencies. It will tackle a diverse range of science problems, including detecting when the first stars were formed, revealing how black holes evolved and mapping the structure of the solar wind and its interaction with the Earth.
The new telescope is part of the European LOFAR (Low Frequency Array) project, which is creating a network of over 5000 separate antennas. LOFAR works at the lowest frequencies accessible from Earth and, combined with advanced computing, allows wide areas of the sky to be surveyed. The LOFAR antennas will eventually be grouped into 'stations' all over Europe, including the Chilbolton Observatory, to form the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescope.
Dr Philip Best, a reader at the Institute for Astronomy, is the deputy leader of the LOFAR-UK project. Dr Best said: “LOFAR’s field of view and sensitivity mean that it can survey the sky orders of magnitude faster than other radio telescopes and it has opened up huge new possibilities for astronomers.The addition of the UK station in Chilbolton doubles the level of detail we can see in the images produced by LOFAR.”
Dr Rob Fender of the University of Southampton, Principal Investigator of the LOFAR-UK project said "The most amazing thing is that these small dipole antennas can pick up faint radio signals from over 10 billion years ago, when the Universe was a fraction of its current size, and that this signal can be mapped over the entire sky by the telescope without a single moving part."
Above image shows the radio Universe as seen at 408 MHz. LOFAR will be able to see this with greater detail at even lower frequency.
The installation of the 96 radio antennas that make up the Chilbolton station was completed by scientists from a consortium of 22 British universities, including Edinburgh, together with the SEPnet consortium and the UK Science and Technologies Facilities Council, making it the largest radio astronomy consortium in the country.
The telescope was officially opened by Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered the first radio pulsars. During the inauguration ceremony, guests observed a pulsar in real time using the Chilbolton station.
The LOFAR project is led by ASTRON in the Netherlands, where the majority of the telescope and the data processing capabilities are located. Additional powerful international stations are located in Germany, France, Sweden andthe UK.
LOFAR-UK is funded through a collaboration of 22 UK universities with the SEPnet consortium and the UK Science and Technologies Facilities Council.
Above image shows the radio Universe as seen at 408 MHz. LOFAR will be able to see this with greater detail at even lower frequency.