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Petra Fisher awarded Woolf Fisher Scholarship

Petra Fisher, Physics BSc (Hons) student at Otago, is one of four Woolf Fisher Trust scholarship awardees for New Zealand in 2025. The prestigious scholarship will fund Petra’s doctoral research at the University of Cambridge. 

Petra’s PhD research in physics will explore astrophysical fluid dynamics associated with the formation and dynamics of galaxies and accretion discs. 

Petra has already had a distinguished career at Otago, gaining Beverly Bursaries (2021,2023,2024), and a University of Otago Prestige Scholarship in Science (2023).

Congratulations Petra!  We wish you all the best for your doctoral studies, and will be keenly following what you do next.

 

Petra’s research articles while at Otago:

https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad1506 

https://doi.org/10.1029/2023SW003731

Woolf Fisher prize in the news

https://www.otago.ac.nz/news/newsroom/sciences-students-receive-woolf-fisher-scholarships

https://auckland.scoop.co.nz/2024/10/2025-woolf-fisher-scholarship-recipients-announced/

https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/campus/pair-cambridge-scholarships

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Sir Michael Berry: James and Jean Davis Prestigious Visitor of the University of Otago

Sir Michael Berry, distinguished British physicist, renowned for his groundbreaking contributions to the field of quantum mechanics and wave phenomena has visited New Zealand as a James and Jean Davis Prestigious Visitor of the University of Otago.

Professor Berry’s work has had profound implications in various disciplines, including optics and condensed matter physics. He is perhaps best known for formulating the Berry phase, a fundamental concept in quantum mechanics that describes how the phase of a quantum state evolves when the system is adiabatically transported around a closed path in parameter space. This concept has not only enriched theoretical physics but has also found applications in areas such as molecular dynamics, quantum computing, and materials science.

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Professor Michael Berry


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Solar Tsunamis ravage earth

An extremely large “G5” geomagnetic storm occurred on Saturday 11 May 2024, leading to widespread aurora seen all over the country and all over the globe.

Extreme space weather can strike at any time, and New Zealand has to be ready. Professor Craig Rodger leads an international team of scientists working on making New Zealand’s energy infrastructure able to withstand large space weather events like Saturday’s geomagnetic storm. The Solar Tsunamis Endeavour Programme led out of the University of Otago Physics Department helped Transpower design their space weather response plan which was enacted for the first time during this event.

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Waves in a Plasma Ocean: Wave-Particle Interactions Throughout the Solar System

Associate Professor Allison Jaynes

University of Iowa

All planetary and smaller bodies in our solar system are embedded in a sea of plasma, like boulders in a terrestrial ocean. Their surfaces or magnetic fields run into this ocean of space plasma, generated primarily by our Sun, and create a whole range of fascinating effects as a result.

The American Physical Society’s Katherine E. Weimer Award winner talks about the plasma ocean of our solar system, from aurora and “killer electrons” to the furthest reaches of space exploration.

This talk will be accessible to all backgrounds, knowledge of Physics not required.

WEDNESDAY 17 April, 5:00PM, Archway 3, University of Otago

 

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Unveiling the secrets of the aurora and other dark-sky emissions

Dr Maxime Grandin

Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Researcher
Finnish Centre of Excellence in Research of Sustainable Space (FORESAIL) Department of Physics
University of Helsinki
Finland

A fascinating natural phenomenon, auroral displays are the result of the interaction between charged particles precipitating from space and the upper atmospheric constituents. Characterising the fluxes of precipitating particles and understanding the mechanisms behind optical emissions still proves challenging and is an active field of research in space physics. After briefly introducing the chain of processes starting at the Sun and leading to auroral emissions in the Earth’s atmosphere, I will focus on two of my ongoing research interests. First, I will discuss how the precipitating electron fluxes have different properties depending on where they occur in the auroral oval. Second, I will talk about how participatory science is becoming a powerful way to gain new insight into dark-sky emission processes, and review recent discoveries it has enabled in space physics. I will advertise an ongoing collaboration aiming at internationalising participatory science initiatives and connecting the communities of aurora hunters together.

WEDNESDAY 6 MARCH, 12:00PM, ROOM 314 SCIENCE III BUILDING
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Potential drivers of the recent large Antarctic ozone holes

Despite public perception, the Antarctic ozone hole has been remarkably massive and long-lived over the past years, and University of Otago researchers believe there are factors beyond CFCs that are contributing. In their ground breaking work just published in Nature Communications, University of Otago Physicists Hannah Kessenich, Annika Seppälä, and Craig Rodger analysed ozone levels from 2004 to 2022, and found there is much less ozone in the centre of the Antarctic ozone hole compared to 19 years ago. While overall Antarctic ozone is recovering due to the Montreal Protocol that banned the harmful ozone depleting CFCs, the slow ozone recovery is focused on the outer parts of the ozone hole.

The Otago team used 20 years of satellite data from the Microwave Limb Sounder instrument on the NASA Aura satellite (https://aura.gsfc.nasa.gov) to identify what drivers the continued ozone depletion in the ozone hole core, and their study highlights the pressing need for comprehensive and ongoing monitoring of the ozone hole due to the critical role the ozone layer plays in protecting life on earth.

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2023 Hector Medal Award to Niels Kjærgaard

On November 15 The Royal Society held its Christchurch event to celebrate 2023 Research Honours. At the event Niels was awarded the Hector Medal for fundamental scientific studies on atomic collisions and light scattering using ultracold gases.

The Hector medal is an award for outstanding work in chemical, physical or mathematical and information sciences by a researcher in New Zealand, awarded annually. Niels will join a distinguished list of recipients since 1912, including Ernest Rutherford, Te Rangi Hiroa (Peter H. Buck), John Newton Dodd, Roy Patrick Kerr, Daniel Frank Walls, Paul Terence Callaghan and Richard Blaikie.

Find out more about the award at the Royal Society Media Release:

“Professor Niels Kjærgaard has been awarded the Hector Medal by Royal Society Te Apārangi for his outstanding contribution to the advancement of scientific understanding of fundamental particles, through experimental studies of atomic collisions and light-scattering using ultracold gases.”

Congratulations Niels!

Find out more about the research, visit the website for Kjærgaard Lab.

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Promotions 2023

Congratulations to Annika Seppälä, Jono Squire, and Paul Muir on your successful promotions in 2023!

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Transient Array Radio Telescope to be adopted by Square Kilometre Array

What started as an idea in 2014 by Dr Tim Molteno to develop the world’s smallest radio telescope in his Department of Physics laboratory at the University of Otago, is now being rolled out across eight partner nations of the Square Kilometre Array project in Southern Africa! The open-source, low-cost radio telescope called the ‘Transient Array Radio Telescope’ has been chosen by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory as the ideal technology to build radio astronomy capacity on the continent.

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