RGS Award to Charles Withers

May 8, 2012 1:00 am

Congratulations to Professor Charles Withers who has been awarded the Founder's Medal for 2012 of the Royal Geographical Society. This is a Royal Medal, approved by the Queen, and awarded in recognition of his work in the encouragement and development of historical and cultural geography.

Outstanding Business Achievement

Apr 25, 2012 1:00 am

Five entrepreneurial students were recognised by the Principal (two from GeoSciences) for their outstanding business achievements. The students—Kanika Bansal, Maria Hillenkamp, Robert Trigwell, Paul Brennan, and Roland Partridge—have all won awards this year for their new business ideas and ventures.

Read More:

• "5 Students Recognised by University of Edinburgh Principal for Outstanding Business Achievements"

Staffmail degraded service alert

Feb 1, 2012 12:00 pm

Some of you may have noticed over the past few days some delivery delays and performance issues with staffmail. This problem has been acknowledged as high priority by Central Services and they have taken mitigating steps to improve the situation and reduce the queue of incoming and outgoing mail. However, some remedial work is going to have to take place on the 6/2/2012 to increase the memory on the backend servers. The hardware is on order and is intended to be installed on Monday evening (6/2/2012:17:00). While the hardware is being installed( about 1 hour), staffmail will not be available. Between now and 6/2/2012, there will be a degraded service. Thank you for your patience Chris

Art/Science Exhibition @St James

Jan 18, 2012 1:00 am

• Edinburgh, 20th January - 26th February 2012

ASCUS is excited to share news with you of its newly acquired public exhibition space opening this January 2012 inside the lively St. James Shopping Centre in the city centre of Edinburgh. ASCUS, along with the generous support from the St. James Centre, will transform the shop-space into a dynamic art exhibition, wherein works from art and science collaborations will be on grand exhibit, celebrated with public engagement events such as artist and scientist lectures, creative workshops, community discussion groups, and social gatherings.

"With an intellectual history and a cultural infrastructure rich in the arts and sciences, Edinburgh is a uniquely fertile ground for art and science collaborations. This is a wonderful opportunity for practitioners and researchers throughout Scotland to share ground-breaking work in an accessible and engaging public space."
—Mark Eischeid, ASCUS

Graciously supported by The Edinburgh Beltane - Beacon for Public Engagement, this exhibition contains works by four teams of established artists and practising scientists spanning various media, from sculptural installation to on-site video and audio works to digital prints. Exhibiting artists and scientists, representing academic institutions from Edinburgh and beyond, include: Liz Adamson, Shaeron Averbuch, Mar Carmena, Julia Collins, Susan Engstrand, Mark Huxham, Alexander Kagansky, Madeleine Shepherd, Amanda Thomson, Graeme Todd, and Gina Wall. Elegantly combining artistic and scientific processes, the exhibition explores themes such as climate change, the theatrics of genetics, the wearability of mathematically arranged fabrics, and the dissemination of a birdsong in unexpected and whimsical ways, sure to evoke wonder and amusement in passersby.

Through this publicly engaging project space at the St. James Centre, ASCUS highlights the connection between the arts and sciences, and the importance of collaboration and community outreach therein. ASCUS aims to share high-level thought, investigations and data of artists’ and scientists’ research in the context of environment, biology, ecology, and mathematics—to perhaps provide visitors with a new and expanded perspective towards their immediate community, environment and world.

• Find out More about ASCUS
• Contact ASCUS
• ASCUS on Facebook

Barry Dawson - Collins Medallist

Jan 9, 2012 1:00 am

Congratulations to Barry Dawson who was awarded the Collins Medal of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland on 4 January 2012 in Durham at the annual meeting of the Volcanic and Magmatic Studies Group (a joint group of the Mineralogical Society and the Geological Society of London).

The medal is awarded “to a scientist who, during a long and active career, has made an outstanding contribution to pure or applied aspects of Mineral Sciences and associated studies”. The medal is named after Joseph Henry Collins, mining engineer, mineralogist and geologist who was one of the founding members of the Mineralogical Society in 1886.

Brian Cameron MBE

Jan 4, 2012 1:00 am

Brian Cameron was awarded MBE in the New Year Honours list in recognition of his enormous contribution to the public understanding and explanation of science over many years. Brian has worked in Schools in the Edinburgh area and throughout Scotland, for example more recently in the development of Carbon Capture and Storage modules for delivery in schools, and he has long been active in the University's Widening Participation Programme. Brian has also become increasingly involved in working with his academic colleagues and postgraduate students in developing and delivering events aimed at the general public that have made a valuable contribution to the promotion of geosciences in the wider community.

Congratulations Brian - well deserved!

Antarctica - Lakes under the Ice

Nov 15, 2011 1:00 am

• Listen to 'Frontiers' - BBC Radio 4 - 09-Nov-2011 on BBC iPlayer - featuring our own Prof Martin Siegert

The last untouched realm of life on the Earth is about to be opened up for scientific exploration. These are the subglacial lakes of Antarctica - vast, dark bodies of prehistoric water, which have been sealed under kilometres of ice for hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Andrew Luck-Baker looks at the science and the ambitious plans behind their exploration.

Russian scientists are poised to penetrate the largest, Lake Vostok, with a conventional drill next January. They have been drilling their way towards the lake top for several years now, located at their research station where the lowest temperature ever measured on the planet was recorded, -90 degrees C.

But the British may beat them when it comes to profound discoveries about subglacial lakes. In December this year, a UK team will set up its own extraordinary ice 'drilling' operation, three kilometres above Lake Ellsworth on the other side of the frozen continent. Lake Ellsworth is roughly the size of Lake Windermere. The UK's audacious plan entails melting a narrow 3.5 kilometre long hole into that lake with a jet of near- boiling water. The scientists will deploy a probe into the depths of the hidden lake to take readings and samples from top to bottom. This stage of NASA-style mission is scheduled for December 2012. It involves scientists and engineers from the British Antarctic Survey and a number of British universities.

Collaboration UK Space Agency

Nov 4, 2011 1:00 am

Brian Cameron and colleagues have recently secured a 'Space for all' community award from the UK Space Agency to develop the project: "Remote sensing of the Earth - an educational resource".

The project will help to introduce the principles of remote sensing and its Earth Observation applications (e.g., resources, hazards, and changing environments) to primary and secondary school children across Scotland. It aims to develop classroom resources that will support the teaching, learning, and understanding of remote sensing science to teachers and pupils, and represent a foundation for the understanding of how data are collected and used in research.

The project starts from January 2012 for 9 months.

Greenland Ice Sheet:On thin Ice?

Oct 14, 2011 1:00 am

Researchers from the Cryosphere Research Group within the School of GeoSciences are putting on a Greenland exhibition at Our Dynamic Earth. The aim of the exhibition is to present to the public a broad summary of current issues associated with the stability of the Greenland Ice Sheet in a warming world and to report on some of the research group’s more recent findings. The exhibition The Exhibition will run for four days over the School half-term from 18-21 Oct inclusive and will appeal to school kids and adults alike.

"During the last several decades the Greenland ice sheet has changed dramatically. In most years, the ice sheet now loses more ice than it gains, thereby increasing global sea level.

We are investigating these changes as they happen to find out how the ice sheet is responding to climate change. Please visit our exhibition to discover how and why the Greenland Ice Sheet is changing and to find out what it's like to be a field scientist!

Come and watch a film about conducting science in the Arctic, browse the display posters and stunning photographs, have a go at a Greenland-themed jigsaw puzzle, watch ice flow and dress up as an Arctic scientist!"

Click on a thumbnail for a larger view

• Read more: What's On at Our Dynamic Earth

National Liftshare Week 2011

Oct 6, 2011 1:00 am

National Liftshare Week 2011

If you’ve thought about car-sharing before, this is the ideal time just to give it a try. It takes five minutes to sign up to the University’s scheme and search for others going your way.

What’s more, if join and set up a Budi Team before 31st October you and your fellow car sharers could each win a £10 M&S gift voucher.

There’s also a top prize of £250 - just send a ‘request to share’ message to another member between 26 September and 9 October, and you could be randomly selected to win.

See this site for details of the National week and the University's scheme. Tripshare Scheme