New Appointments to the
Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council
Science and Innovation Minister, Lord Sainsbury today announced four new
appointments to the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC)
Council.
The new appointments to PPARC Council are: Professor Roger Davies, Oxford University
 Dr Jordan Nash, Imperial College London
 Dr Phil Kaziewicz, GI Partners
 Professor Tony Hey, Microsoft Corporation
These appointments are for a four year period up to 31 st March 2010.
The Council consists of the Chair, the Chief Executive and Deputy Chair, and
between 10 and 18 other members.
The Council is the key strategy-making, policy-forming and priority-setting body,
receiving recommendations and advice from the Executive and advisory bodies.
Membership to the Council is drawn from the academic and industrial
communities and the purpose of Council is to pursue the objects set out in the
PPARC Charter.
For a full list of PPARC Council members please see
http://www.pparc.ac.uk/cnt/council.asp
ENDS
Contacts
Julia Maddock – PPARC Press Office
Tel: 01793 442094. Email: Julia.maddock@pparc.ac.uk
Notes to Editors
Council members receive an honorarium (currently £6,280 per annum).
These appointments have been made in accordance with OCPA Code of
Practice. All appointments are made on merit and political activity plays no part in
the selection process. However in accordance with the original Nolan
recommendations there is a requirement for appointee’s political activity to be
made public.
The new appointees hold no other ministerial public appointments and have
declared that they have no political activities.
Appointments to PPARC Council
Professor Roger Davies is the Philip Wetton Professor of Astrophysics at
Oxford University and Dr. Lee's Reader in Physics at Christ Church. He started
his career with research in galaxy dynamics in Cambridge after which he spent 6
years at the US National Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. As part of the”7
samurai'' team he formulated new distance indicators for galaxies and discovered
the “Great Attractor'', a huge concentration of galaxy clusters in the southern sky.
He moved to Oxford in 1988 to lead the UK's participation in the construction of
the 8m Gemini telescopes, one in Hawaii and one in Chile. In 1994 he took up
the post of Professor of Astronomy at Durham University returning to Oxford in
2002. His research interests centre on cosmological questions such as the
distribution of mass on the largest scales and how galaxies form and evolve. He
has a longstanding interest in astronomical instruments & telescopes. In recent
years he has pioneered the use of a new class of astronomical spectrograph to
measure the masses and ages of galaxies, as well as search for black holes in
their nuclei. He has held several posts associated with observatories including
the Chairmanship of the Board of Directors of the Anglo-Australian Observatory
and the Gemini Telescopes Boards. He has served on PPARC’s Science
Committee and has previously been a member of PPARC Council. His
appointment to Council was terminated early so that he could take up a PPARC
Advanced Fellowship. He is currently a member of the Council of the Royal
Astronomical Society and Particle Physics & Astronomy Research Council.
Dr Jordan Nash, Imperial College London is a Reader in Physics, based at
CERN. He has had extensive involvement with PPARC advisory bodies, having
served on Science Committee and Particle Physics panels. He has a strong
international research reputation and considerable experience of leading
international collaborations. He is currently working on the CMS detector for the
Large Hadron Collider at CERN, due to start up in 2007. He has previously
worked on world leading particle physics experiments such as BaBar at SLAC
(Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) and ALEPH at LEP (the Large Electron
Positron Collider at CERN).
Dr Phil Kaziewicz, is Managing Director and one of the Founding Partners of
Global Innovation Partners LLC, a transatlantic private equity group, which has
invested over $560 million in companies and assets in the USA and in Europe.
He completed a BSc Pure and Applied Physics, UMIST, followed by a PhD High
Energy Experimental Physics, University College London before becoming an
Associate Director at Nomura International, then later Head of Technology
Development at Quadriga Worldwide plc. He has considerable experience in
making investment decisions; of technology development and project
management; and a sound background in corporate financing and governance.
Professor Tony Hey is Corporate Vice-President for Technical Computing at the
Microsoft Corporation. He was previously Director of the UK e-Science Core
Programme. He read Physics at the University of Oxford and was awarded a BA
and a DPhil. He has had a research career at world leading institutions including
Caltech, CERN, MIT and IBM Research. After 15 years in particle physics, he
switched to IT and became Head of the Electronics and Computer Science
Department and Dean of Engineering at Southampton University. He also has
extensive experience of collaborative projects with industry and academia both in
the UK and in European and International Projects. He has also co-authored two
popular books on Science and is co-author of a best-selling graduate text book
on 'Gauge Theories in Particle Physics'. He was awarded a CBE for services to
science in 2005 and is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the IEE,
the British Computing Society and the Institute of Physics.
The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) is the UK’s
strategic science investment agency. It funds research, education and public
understanding in four broad areas of science - particle physics, astronomy,
cosmology and space science. PPARC is government funded and provides
research grants and studentships to scientists in British universities, gives
researchers access to world-class facilities and funds the UK membership of
international bodies such as the European Organisation for Nuclear Research,
CERN, the European Space Agency and the European Southern Observatory. It
also contributes money for the UK telescopes overseas on La Palma, Hawaii,
Australia and in Chile, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre at the Royal
Observatory, Edinburgh and the MERLIN/VLBI National Facility.