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An Interview with Stuart Lowe

May 7, 2012

This week’s interview is with Stuart Lowe.

Jessica Barton: What is your job title?
Stuart Lowe: Astronomy web developer.

JB: What does your work at LCOGT involve?
SL: I support LCOGT’s education and outreach program by making cool things on the web. I helped make Agent Exoplanet and Virtual Sky (which, along with Chromoscope, are my attempts to start making the astrometrics lab from Star Trek). I helped with Star In A Box, adding some features, remodeling here and there. I’m also contributing to the coding for the public observing interface that will be used once our network comes online. I actually think of these things as hand-made, kind of like a craft. I know a lot of people don’t think of things on the web this way, but I think it’s the same kind of crafting process where you make something, then whittle it down, work on it some more, and polish it until you’re happy with it.

JB: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself - your education, interests, past work experiences.
SL: I grew up in a city and never had a telescope. As a child I was interested in space and watched Star Trek, Doctor Who and things like that. In secondary school I thought I wanted to be an architect, but then I realized I was spending a lot of time in school chatting with a friend about the Universe. I hadn't realized until then that it was something you could study at university. I applied, and was accepted, to a degree program in physics with astrophysics at the University of Manchester. After that I did my PhD in radio astronomy at Jodrell Bank Observatory. My PhD work was mostly using a radio telescope in Poland. After my PhD I did a post-doc working on ESA’s Planck satellite where I helped build and test instruments both before launch, and afterwards while it was on its way to L2. It is great to be able to say that things I’ve handled are now 1 million miles away from the Earth.

JB: What led you to the career/job you are doing now?
SL: It was a series of fortunate events. I wasn’t one of those people who knew from an young age that I wanted to be an astronomer - I just keep following my interests.

JB: What is a typical day at work like?
SL: I cycle into work at Cardiff University and then spend some time catching up on emails from the previous night. That’s one of the things about working with an organization with lots of people in other time zones. I spend my day writing computer code, editing the LCOGT website, coming up with new ideas, learning new skills, and looking for inspiration of cutting edge web technology and thinking about how to adapt it to astronomy. One of the reasons I wrote Virtual Sky was because I wanted to learn HTML5. There are also a couple of tea breaks each day (I’m British after all) and some time spent chatting with my office mates, which is where some great ideas come from actually.

JB: What advice would you offer people wanting to go into the type of work you do?
SL: Do things you are interested in. Don’t necessarily believe that how others think you should proceed is going to be the right way for you, and don’t stay in a job if you aren’t interested in what you’re doing. Also, things are often more flexible than they appear. For example, I recently spoke with a secondary school student who wanted to study astronomy, but was worried they might not get accepted to university because they weren’t taking physics as part of their A-levels (UK exams at age 16-18). I encouraged them to speak with someone at the university and apply anyway, because there can be more flexibility than it might appear especially if you have good mathematical skills. Persevering at mathematics is important as it gives you a great foundation for many physics-related jobs.

JB: Do you have any hobbies?
SL: Well, I used to do a lot of mountaineering, but where I live now is quite far from the mountains. However, I’m much closer to the sea now so I recently started learning to sail. A lot of my spare time I spend doing web stuff, for example I built Chromoscope in my spare time while I was working with Planck.

JB: Thanks Stuart!

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