Robert G. Cooper

So yeah, that’s my name on the microchip which will head into the sun’s atmosphere. It’ll be great to see what comes out of ‘touching the sun’.

“The primary science goals for the mission are to trace how energy and heat move through the solar corona and to explore what accelerates the solar wind as well as solar energetic particles. The mission will revolutionize our understanding of the Sun, where changing conditions can spread out into the solar system, affecting Earth and other worlds.” – NASA

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/public-invited-to-come-aboard-nasa-s-first-mission-to-touch-the-sun

I just wanted to state my backing of our lecturers in their current and future strike action over the changes to their pension schemes. I think it’s outrageous and unfair how much they are set to lose if the proposed changes go ahead. I myself currently intend to stay in academia in the future and would like to eventually become a lecturer, however the proposed changes to the pension scheme certainly puts me off the idea. How can you spent 40-odd years in such an important profession only to then spend retirement potentially living below the poverty line under the new pension plans. Especially considering that the amount paid in would be the same as in the current pension scheme.

I will be emailing the vice-chancellor of Newcastle University to express my views on the matter, and I encourage everybody to support our lecturers and university staff.

Rob

In December 2017 I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (FRAS).

December’s edition of the Astronomy and Geophysics was very interesting. In particular I enjoyed reading Ian Crawford’s article about why we should build a moon village. Although with my PhD topic I would petition for one on Mars, hopefully it would go better than in The Martian.

Also the free diary for members is amazing!

Thanks,

Rob

So I spent this week at the University of Leeds for a combined Computational MHD Workshop and Conference in honour of Professor Sam Falle.

I had a great week and enjoyed playing around with the HPC system provided by DiRAC using codes such as MG, Snoopy and PHANTOMSPH. Thanks to all of the organisers, I feel I learned a great deal and also met so many other PhD students who I will no doubt see at other conferences.

In particular it was great to chat with Rob from the University of Leeds whose PhD project is highly related to my own on convective dynamos. I also particularly enjoyed talks given by Dr J. Wurster, Prof S. Tobias and Prof D. Hughes.

So the first paper I co-authored has now finally been published in Fluid Dynamics Research!

My contribution to this paper was based on a numerical code I wrote to compute a range of topological and geometrical properties of superfluid vortices, notably computing a knot invariant known as the Alexander polynomial.

We numerically study the evolution of a small turbulent region of quantised vorticity in superfluid helium, a regime which can be realised in the laboratory. We show that the turbulence achieves a fluctuating steady-state in terms of dynamics (energy), geometry (length, writhing) and topology (linking). We show that, at any instant, the turbulence consists of many unknots and few large loops of great geometrical and topological complexity.

So today was my first day of my PhD at Newcastle University. I had my induction and first official meeting with Dr P Bushby and Dr C Guervilly and am looking forward to getting to stuck into a new project.

Thanks,

Rob

So this week I attended the introductory summer school run by the STFC, hosted by Northumbria University at Jury’s Inn.

It was a great week where I learned a lot of new things and met fellow STFC-funded PhD students. In particular I enjoyed Valery Nakariakov’s talk in MHD Waves and Instabilities and Lucie Green’s talk on CMEs. Also, the food at Jury’s Inn was amazing so thanks to them and the organisers.

Rob

So today I graduated from Newcastle University with a 1st in my Master’s.

I was also pleased to receive an award for my academic achievement including a year’s Associate Membership to the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.

I had a great day and look forward to beginning my PhD late-September.

Rob

So yesterday my final set of exam results were released. I achieved 84% for my MMath project, 70% in Differential Equations, Transform Methods and Fields and 77% in both Differential Geometry and General Relativity and Number Theory and Cryptography.

I think maybe I could’ve done better but all that matters is that I will therefore be graduating this July with an average of 80.4% and a First Class Masters in Mathematics.

That also means I have the grades I need to get the PhD I have been offered working with Dr C. Guervilly and Dr P. Bushby. I look forward to getting started this September.

Rob

So that’s it, my final exams of my undergraduate degree are over.

Number Theory and Cryptography wasn’t too bad it’s just the numbers we were given for performing things like RSA encryption were especially large making many questions very time consuming. So most of us ran out of time to finish a lot of questions.

General Relativity, we all found Question 1 quite hard but I know I got all of Questions 3 and 4 correct.

Differential Equations, Transform Methods and Fields was quite tough. We were very surprised not to have been asked a single question including Fourier Series or Legendre Series which covered about 25% of what we’d been taught.

But anyway, now my undergraduate degree is almost over. Just got my graduation in July and then subject to my grades I hope to start my PhD in September/October.

Rob