Delegates can sign up to attend any of the lunches during the registration process. The lunches will run from 12:00-13:30
Careers Lunch (Monday 3rd July; Kingsley Suite, Canham Turner)
This session will give PhD students and postdocs valuable advice on how to survive and thrive in academia and in the wider economy. We will have a speaker from industry, looking to employ PhD graduates; an early career researcher will discuss how to pursue a career in academia, and an outreach specialist will talk about the growing opportunities in public engagement. Come along to find out where your career might take you, and what you need to do to make your ambition a reality.
MIST Business Lunch (Tuesday 4th July; floor7, Brynmor Jones library)
Special lunch organized for the Magnetospheric, Ionospheric and Solar-Terrestrial physics group.
UKSP Lunch (Wednesday 5th July; floor7, Brynmor Jones library))
Business lunch organized for the UK Solar Physics community.
Diversity Lunch (Wednesday 5th July; Kingsley Suite, Canham Turner)
The RAS is committed to tackling diversity issues. In this session, chaired by Dr Sheila Kanani, Education, Outreach and Diversity officer at the RAS, we will give an update on RAS diversity and equality, and will demonstrate how the society is working with other groups to encourage people of all backgrounds to pursue study and careers in astronomy, space science and geophysics. Speakers include the National Autistic Society and astronomer Robert Burston who has Asperger’s Syndrome, and will present his talk on Autism & Genius (abstract below).
Autism and Genius: Darwin, Einstein, Dirac
Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Paul Dirac are arguably three of the most influential people that have ever lived. They have affected not only our theoretical understanding of the universe and our place in it, but our industry, technology, societies and culture across the globe. This talk aims to briefly examine what these effects have been, within and beyond the framework of academic science, before exploring a new, radical, explanatory and sometimes amusing theory of the characters of these intellectual giants: Autism.
It has been suggested that Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Paul Dirac each had some form of autism. The strength of the evidence in favour of these diagnoses and to what extent autistic traits informed the working methods and therefore the scientific achievements of all three is assessed. The talk then goes on to discuss the challenges contemporary autistic scientists face because of the prevailing culture within UK academic science, particularly in relation to job selection criteria, funding criteria and day-to-day working environments. It is conjectured that some of the most capable and influential scientists in history would have failed under the prevailing UK academic system.
Learn the amusing tales of how Darwin decided whether or not to get married, when a search party was called out to find Einstein and how Dirac handled people who didn’t understand his equations. Also learn how autism has changed the world.
Education & Public Outreach Lunch (Thursday 6th July; Kingsley Suite, Canham Turner)
Join the Education and Outreach team at the RAS for informal networking on topics of interest in astronomy and geophysics outreach, with different table discussions led by experts in their education and outreach area.
Each table session will be approximately 8 minutes then an alarm will sound and participants will be asked move around the room in order to talk to people in as many areas of astronomy and geophysics outreach as possible.
Table heads and their areas of outreach are listed below, so come along with specific questions or just to chat to them about astronomy and geophysics outreach!
