"From climate to energy: physics is key to the world's most pressing issues"

We are delighted to invite you all to join us on this Special Department of Physics Lecture.

Hosted by Prof Ian Shipsey (Head of Physics), and Prof Philip Stier (Head of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics (AOPP)) the topic will be Energy and Climate Change. The event will be held via Zoom, on December 11th, at 17:00hrs GMT.

Joining Profs Shipsey and Stier, our guest speakers are world-leaders on their field:

Prof Myles Allen

Recently described as "the physicist behind net zero" Myles Allen developed the methods used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001 to quantify the size of human influence on observed and projected changes in global temperature. He founded the climateprediction.net project, enabling members of the public to volunteer computing resources to run the world's largest climate modelling experiments, and in 2003 he proposed how probabilities could be used to assign responsibility for individual extreme weather events. In 2010 he was awarded the Appleton Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics "for his important contributions to the detection and attribution of human influence on climate and quantifying uncertainty in climate predictions."

At a conference in 2005, Allen first proposed the concept of a global carbon budget: the idea that peak warming is determined by the total amount of carbon dioxide we emit into the atmosphere before emissions are reduced to net zero, not the amount we emit in any given year or the eventual long-term atmospheric concentration. He has been working on the implications for climate policy ever since, most recently as coordinating lead author for the 2018 IPCC Special Report on 1.5 degrees, and has long been a proponent of fossil fuel producers taking responsibility for cleaning up after the products they sell, rather than placing the onus on relatively powerless consumers: https://go.ted.com/mylesallen. He is a Professor of Geosystem Science in the School of Geography and the Environment and the Department of Physics, University of Oxford, a Fellow of Linacre College and Director of the Oxford Net Zero initiative.

Prof Henry Snaith

Henry Snaith is a physicist working on new materials and devices for photovoltaic solar energy conversion. His multidisciplinary work spans activities from new materials discovery and synthesis, through device optimization to fundamental spectroscopic and theoretical investigations. Henry Snaith discovered that a new type of solar cell material, named perovskites, can produce extremely efficient solar cells based on earth abundant materials which are also very easy and cheap to manufacture. By combining perovskites with silicon, in so-called “tandem cells” he has demonstrated efficiencies far beyond what is possible with existing commercial PV technologies, and promises to deliver the next generation of improved PV for powering the world towards net zero. Henry Snaith is intimately involved in the commercialization of this technology, as co-founder and Chief Scientific Offer of Oxford PV Ltd. Oxford PV is presently building the first full-scale production line based on his perovskite technology. Henry Snaith was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society at the age of 37, for starting a new field of research attracting both academic and industrial following. He has also won numerous awards and accolades, including the Blavatnik Award for Young Scientist, being named one of “Natures Ten” people who mattered in 2013 and topping the rank of the world’s “Hottest Researchers” in 2017, as judged by Clarivate Analytical.

Everyone is welcome to join. If you'd like to reserve your place, please register soon.

The link to join via Zoom will be shared the day before the event. Registrations ends 10th December, 11am. GMT.

If you have any questions, please email alumni@physics.ox.ac.uk