this afternoon (June 17th) professor Stafford Withington from the Cavendish laboratory will give a talk in room F at 15.00.

He works on the development of advanced instrumentation and ultra-low noise detector technology for astrophysics and the applied sciences. Most of the Group's work is carried out in the millimetre-wave, submillimetre-wave, and infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The Detector Physics Group runs a major superconducting detector fabrication facility, and is interested in many aspects of device physics, including heat transport in low-dimensional structures, solid-state noise mechanisms at low temperatures, and the materials science associated with fabricating complex science grade devices and microcircuits. Stafford Withington has considerable expertise in the optical physics and numerical modelling of submillimetre-wave and infrared bolometers, imaging arrays, interferometers, phased arrays, and pulsed optical systems.

He has held various positions in the Cavendish Laboratory since 1985, and prior to that held a Royal Society Fellowship in Chalmers University, Gothenberg, Sweden. He is currently a Professor of Physics, and Head of the Detector Physics Group. He is also a Professorial Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, and Honorary Visiting Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester, where he did his PhD. Prior to 1985 he worked for various companies including, Rolls Royce Engines (1971) Ltd, Marconi Space and Defence Systems Ltd, and Ferranti Microwave Electronics.