R. J. Ivison

I am an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), where previously I was Director for Science from 2014-2023. Before that, I was Professor of Astrophysics at the Institute for Astronomy (IfA), which is part of the University of Edinburgh, and an Independent Merit research scientist at the UK Astronomy Technology Centre, a PPARC Advanced Fellow (Ernest Rutherford Fellowships nowadays) at the IfA, and a lecturer at University College London. From 2013-18 I held an Advanced Grant, COSMICISM, from the European Research Council, which aimed to study the formation and evolution of galaxies, mainly via observations at far-infrared, submillimetre and radio wavelengths. I currently lead science projects with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's upgraded Jansky Very Large Array, (JVLA) near Socorro in New Mexico, and with the fabulous new Atacama Large Millimetre/Submm Array (ALMA) in Chile. My time is split between supervising PhD students, writing proposals to use or build telescopes, analysing data, and writing papers - the divine overlap between science and art. What I do is esoteric by most standards, but normal in astrophysics. I meddle mainly with faint smudges in far-flung regions of the Universe. The golden rule seems to be that I get interested in things that are ridiculously difficult to study and explain.