Nobel Laureate to speak at alumni event

  • April 7, 2014
Nobel Laureate to speak at alumni event

Nobel Laureate Professor Brian Schmidt is to give a lecture at a Gates Cambridge Alumni event in Australia this week.

Nobel Laureate Professor Brian Schmidt is to give a lecture at a Gates Cambridge Alumni event in Australia this week.

Professor Schmidt, who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2011 “for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae”, will speak at the event at Queensland University of Technology Brisbane on 11 April.

His lecture, entitled The Discovery of Cosmic Acceleration, is part of two days of activities, including a GCAA dinner and a social event on the Saturday.

He will talk about his life and career leading up to his High-Z Supernova Search team’s discovery of cosmic acceleration. Professor Schmidt and his team mapped data from exploding stars called supernovae, which uncovered the fact that the expansion of the universe was accelerating, not slowing down as was commonly thought.

The event is designed to give Gates alumni in Australia and New Zealand an opportunity to get together and meet a Nobel Laureate; to provide a great networking opportunity between Gates alumni and Rhodes Scholars and alumni from Oxford, Cambridge and MIT and to promote the Gates Cambridge Scholarship in Australia and New Zealand. 

Organiser Robert Perrons [2001], a Gates Cambridge alumnus and Associate Professor in Technology Management and Strategy at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, says: “We are confident that this event will achieve all of these objectives very well, and we are expecting this to be the Gates Cambridge Alumni Association’s best event yet in Australia-NZ!”

More information.

Picture credit: www.freedigitalphotos.net and fotographic1980

Latest News

Taking a broader lens to women and development

Tara Cookson’s research has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to women and development. Her PhD supervisor, Professor Sarah Radcliffe, called it “highly original”. Since leaving Cambridge Tara has continued to break new ground, founding the feminist research consultancy Ladysmith and taking up a Canada Research Chair in the School of Public […]

What makes humans unique?

Sara Sherbaji’s research explores fundamental questions of what makes humans unique and the role culture plays in our evolution. Her questions build on her Master’s dissertation, on her work as a psychology lab coordinator and on her experience of fleeing the Syrian war. She says:  “Since leaving Syria during the war, my goal has been […]

At the heart of global economic development policy

Charles Amo Yartey [2002] always wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps as an accountant. Growing up in Ghana, he applied to do Business Administration at university, but, because he had not studied business at school, he was offered Economics. It proved to be the start of a fascinating career at the centre of global […]

Are AI models as divided as we are?

Elections often reveal how deeply divided humanity can be. This year, as increasing polarisation continued to shape our world, we asked: Does this division transfer to our AI? Our journey to answer this question began in 2022, when we started our PhDs as Gates Cambridge Scholars. Two concurrent events captured this moment in history: the […]