Understanding our star and solar flares using X-ray and ultraviolet observations
Dr Natasha Jeffrey, University of Glasgow
Natasha is a solar physics researcher and lecturer at the University of Glasgow. She studies solar flares, large releases of energy in the Sun’s atmosphere, and a key component of space weather. She is interested in using high-energy observations to study flares, and this helps us understand how energy is released and then transferred to flare-accelerated particles and heating in the Sun’s atmosphere, processes that are fundamental to all high-energy astrophysics. Dr. Jeffrey is experienced with modelling flare-accelerated electrons and X-rays at the Sun, in hot, collisional plasma conditions. She is also adept in flare X-ray and ultraviolet imaging and spectroscopy using instruments such as Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) and Hinode EUV Imaging Spectrometer (EIS), to diagnose the properties of flare-accelerated electrons, diagnose the properties of coronal and chromospheric plasmas, and understand solar flare turbulence. Dr. Jeffrey received her Ph.D. in 2014 at the University of Glasgow after working under the supervision of Dr. Eduard Kontar and since 2015 she has worked at the University of Glasgow as a researcher with Professor Lyndsay Fletcher. She is an elected member of the UK Solar Physics council and recently, she was awarded both the European Geophysical Union (EGU) Solar-Terrestrial (2018) and European Physical Society (EPS) Solar Physics Division (ESPD) (2017) Early Career Researcher Prizes for her part in the “warm-target” model, a model that finally helps us to constrain the properties of flare-accelerated electrons after fifty years. She currently has eighteen refereed publications since 2010 with 196 citations and h-index of 8. Her most cited paper has 65 citations, and her most cited first author paper has 15 citations (NASA ADS). Natasha is also involved in several different outreach activities and she has talked about solar physics at different local astronomy groups over the last couple of years including Airdrie, Troon and Inverclyde Sky Watchers, as well as supporting the Institute of Physics (IOP) Girls in Physics events.
High-dimensional entanglement: a personal journey
Dr Lucia Caspani, University of Strathclyde
Lucia Caspani received her Bachelor (2003), Master (2006) and PhD Degree (2010) in Physics from Insubria University (Como, Italy), where she theoretically investigated the spatiotemporal structure of entanglement in second-order nonlinear media. From April 2011 to May 2014 Dr Caspani has been a postdoctoral fellow at INRS-EMT (Canada), where she carried out experimental research activities mainly related to the generation of multimode and multiphoton entanglement in integrated structures, for applications to quantum communication and computing. From July 2014 to Jan 2017 she was a Marie Curie Fellow at Heriot-Watt University, performing research on the generation of entangled photon triplets, 2D-materials nonlinearity and enhanced nonlinearity in low-permittivity media. Since February 2017 she has a joint appointment with the Institute of Photonics (Strathclyde University) and Fraunhofer Centre for Applied Photonics, as a research fellow first and then as Lecturer and Chancellor’s Fellow (from June 2018). There, she is developing compact sources of quantum states of light for quantum metrology and quantum information.
From MeV to TeV: event simulation and model-fitting at the LHC and beyond
Dr Andy Buckley, University of Glasgow
Andy is a lecturer in particle physics at the University of Glasgow, and holder of an extended Royal Society University Research Fellowship. Originally from Belfast, he took both his undergraduate and PhD degrees at the University of Cambridge -- the latter on preparations for the LHCb collider physics experiment at CERN. Switching direction, his first postdoctoral work was in Durham on Monte Carlo simulation of collider events, during which he first developed tools and methods widely used at the LHC. This was followed by a SUPA Advanced Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh on event simulation and measurement of QCD and Higgs boson phenomena, and by 2 years at CERN in charge of event modelling for the ATLAS experiment. Since moving to the University of Glasgow, Andy has been leading LHC measurements of b-quark dynamics, and working on "synoptic" reinterpretations of LHC data in frameworks of physics beyond the Standard Model.
Optical sensing and manipulation for physico-chemical and biomedical applications
Dr Stella Corsetti, University of St Andrews
Stella is a Research Fellow in the Optical Manipulation group at the University of St Andrews. She holds a BSc in Biomedical Engineering and a MSc in Bio-Nanotechnology Engineering obtained at the University of Rome 'La Sapienza'. She received her PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Aberdeen in 2016. Her project involved the use of single particle manipulation and spectroscopic techniques to study hydrocarbon phase transitions. She subsequently worked as PDRA at the College of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee and at Lancaster University. Her research interests focus on the development and application of optical and spectroscopic techniques for physicochemical and biomedical applications.
Soft materials for energy applications
Dr Job Thijssen, University of Edinburgh
Job completed his PhD in The Netherlands, in the Soft Condensed Matter Physics group at Utrecht University, on the characterization of photonic colloidal crystals using microscopy and scattering techniques. He moved to the Edinburgh Soft Matter Physics group in 2007 for a postdoc. In 2010, he was awarded a Royal Society of Edinburgh / BP Trust Personal Research Fellowship, to start exploring the use of soft materials in energy-storage applications, during which he kick-started a fruitful collaboration with battery expert Professor Peter Bruce, then at the University of St Andrews and now at the University of Oxford. In 2014, Job was awarded an Edinburgh University Chancellor's Fellowship and started his own group on Soft Matter Physics & Materials, focussing on energy applications and coatings. He currently leads the Edinburgh effort in the EPSRC networking centre "Multiscale Tuning of Interfaces and Surfaces for Energy Applications" led by Professor John Irvine in the School of Chemistry at the University of St Andrews.