I am an astronomer with particular interests in astronomical instrumentation, telescopes and new observational techniques, and with research programmes studying the nature and composition of cosmic dust, the interstellar medium and star formation processes.

 

I give graduate lectures on the Interstellar Medium.  A PDF summary of the ISM lectures can be retrieved in colour or in black and white.

Handouts for undergraduate lectures in the 4th year astrophysics option, C1, on Atomic Processes and the ISM can be found here.

 

At Hertford College, I am one of two physics fellows and tutor undergraduates in the Oxford physics course.  I am also the Investment Bursar.

 

Amongst my departmental duties are chairing the mechanical workshops advisory committee and the cost-recovered services committee.

 

I am currently the Council President of the European Southern Observatory and Chair of the ALMA Board.

 

I was involved with the Gemini 8-m telescopes from the inception of the project in 1990 and was the UK Gemini Project scientist from 1996-2002.  During that period, the UK Gemini support group was established at Oxford.  The Gemini Observatory operates twin 8-m telescopes in Hawaii and Chile, but the UK withdrew from Gemini at the end of December 2012, and this activity has now terminated.

 

At Oxford, I have led the development of two infrared cameras: WHIRCAM which was delivered to the William Herschel Telescope in La Palma in 1995 and UFTI, the fast-track imager that was delivered to the UK Infrared Telescope in Hawaii in 1998.  An article describing UFTI was published in the PPARC Frontiers magazine, while some of the images obtained can be found in the UKIRT image gallery.  One of the programmes conducted with UFTI is a census of low mass objects in the Orion nebula, which revealed a number of objects in the planetary mass regime, and which was selected as astronomy picture of the day in March 2000.  I have obtained subsarcsecond spatially resolved mid-infrared spectra of a number of nearby active galaxy nuclei. These have been published in MNRAS and text files of the spectra are available here.  

 

 A list of refereed publications can be found here and all publications here.