Tim O’Brien is a Professor of Astrophysics and an Associate Director of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at The University of Manchester.

At bluedot, Tim has co-curated the science elements of the programme and will be contributing in various ways with talks from the Lovell Stage, in the bluedot Lecture Series and in multimedia presentations of sounds from space working alongside other artists.

He has published around 150 research papers, mainly on the study of thermonuclear explosions on white dwarf stars in binary systems. He has used a wide range of telescopes around the world and in space, including the e-MERLIN radio telescopes operated from Jodrell Bank, X-ray satellites, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope in Chile. Most recently, he has begun some work on the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence using radio telescopes (he hasn’t found any yet).

Catch Tim on the Lovell Stage throughout the festival with Science from the Stage