Tag Archives: Science

Art illuminates the beauty of science – and could inspire the next generation of scientists young and old

Chris Curran is Professor and Director Neuroscience Program, Northern Kentucky University
“I received my PhD in Environmental Genetics & Molecular Toxicology with a focus on genetic susceptibility to developmental neurotoxicants. I trained under Dr. Daniel Nebert and continue to benefit from the knockout mice he generously donated while starting an independent research career at Northern Kentucky University. I am also grateful to NIEHS which has funded our research here at NKU and supported nearly 100 undergraduates directly or indirectly over the last 12 years. I am past president of the Society for Birth Defects Research and Prevention and represent BDRP on the FASEB Board of Directors. I also service as a Councilor for the Society of Toxicology and the Developmental Neurotoxicology Society.”

Mandelbrot’s fractals are not only gorgeous – they taught mathematicians how to model the real world

Polina Vytnova is a Lecturer in Mathematics, University of Surrey

Polina received her MSc from the Independent University of Moscow and PhD from the University of Warwick. After temporary research positions at Queen Mary University of London, Brown University, and University of Warwick she joined the Department of Mathematics University of Surrey as a lecturer in pure mathematics.
Her research covers a broad range of topics in general area of Dynamical Systems. She enjoys bringing together different branches of mathematics such as Number Theory, Fractal Geometry and Analysis, applying methods from one of them to problems in another.

Mathematics of scale: Big, small and everything in between

Mitchell Newberry is a Research Assistant Professor of Biology, University of New Mexico. He is a computational biologist and complex systems scientist whose research spans population dynamics, the evolution of language and culture, the maintenance of diversity in ecosystems, and vascular morphology, while contributing to the nuts and bolts of software and statistics. His work appears in Nature, Physical Review Letters, Royal Society Interface and Theoretical Population Biology as well as Popular Science, Buzzfeed and the Atlantic.

Extraterrestrial life may look nothing like life on Earth − so astrobiologists are coming up with a framework to study how complex systems evolve

Chris Impey is a University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona. He has over 180 refereed publications on observational cosmology, galaxies, and quasars, and his research has been supported by $20 million in NASA and NSF grants. He has won eleven teaching awards, and has taught three massive open online classes with over 180,000 enrolled. Impey is a past Vice President of the American Astronomical Society and he has been an NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar, Carnegie Council’s Arizona Professor of the Year, and most recently, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. He’s written over 70 popular articles on cosmology and astrobiology, two introductory textbooks, a novel called ‘Shadow World’, and eight popular science books: ‘The Living Cosmos’, ‘How It Ends’, ‘Talking About Life’, ‘How It Began’, ‘Dreams of Other Worlds’, ‘Humble Before the Void’, ‘Beyond: The Future of Space Travel’, and ‘Einstein’s Monsters: The Life and Times of Black Holes’.

The Art-Science Symbiosis

‘The Art-Science Symbiosis’ book outlines new approaches to understand current scientific practice in general and art-science in particular, showcasing how contemporary art can provide a unique perspective on the meaning and potential of collaboration. The book explores the different scopes of the art- science practice and 22 art-science works from all over the world, including interviews and descriptions by the same art-scientists.

How the science of tiny timescales could speed up computers and improve solar cell technology

Professor Carla Figueira de Morisson Faria is a specialist in theoretical strong-field laser-matter interaction at the Dept of Physics & Astronomy, University College London (UCL). Since the mid-1990s, she has been developing theoretical models for several phenomena in this context, using both analytical and numerical methods. Dr. Faria has over 100 publications in this research area, in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, and has participated in several conferences in Optical Physics, in many of which as an invited speaker. She is also a referee for several optics journals (Optics Communications, JOSA B, Journal of Modern Optics and Optics Letters), and has various collaborations with leading groups in the field. She also actively collaborates with scientists in other research areas, such as quantum optics and mathematical physics.

The earliest galaxies formed amazingly fast after the Big Bang. Do they break the universe or change its age?

Sandro Tacchella is an astrophysicist working at the Department of Physics (Cavendish Laboratory) and at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology of the University of Cambridge. Before joining the University of Cambridge in 2022, he was Assistant Professor at the Physics Department of UNIST in Ulsan, Korea. From 2017-2021, he was a CfA Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, USA. He has received his Ph.D. from ETH Zurich (Switzerland) in 2017.
Sandro’s long-range scientific goal is to understand the physics of the formation and evolution of galaxies and black holes across cosmic time. Specifically, he investigates the physical mechanisms that govern the formation of the first galaxies in the early universe, the buildup of the bulge and disk components in galaxies, and the cessation of star formation in massive galaxies. He exploits cutting-edge multi-wavelength observational data obtained with some of the most advanced telescopes on ground and in space. He uses and develops analytical and cosmological numerical models to shed light on the physical properties of galaxies. Sandro is also heavily involved in the new James Webb Space Telescope, playing a key role both in the data processing of the NIRCam instrument and in projects aimed at detecting galaxies formed in the early Universe and at characterising their primeval properties.

‘Dark stars’: dark matter may form exploding stars – and observing the damage could help reveal what it’s made of

Andreea Font is a Reader in Theoretical Astrophysics, Liverpool John Moores University.

“I am a theoretical cosmologist and my interests are in the formation and evolution of galaxies, in particular in the formation of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. To this aim, I build computer simulations that follow the evolution of Milky Way-type galaxies since their birth until the present time.
I am particularly interested in making detailed comparisons between cosmological simulations of the Milky Way and the most up-to-date observational data in our Galaxy, for example, the data obtained from the Gaia satellite. Examples of my recent work include modelling of stellar haloes of Milky Way-type galaxies and of satellite dwarf galaxies orbiting these systems.
I also have an interest in deciphering the nature of dark matter and, to this aim, I develop models that help us distinguish between various possible dark matter particle candidates using cosmological simulations.”