Alan

Geek and amateur photographer. Views are my own. Professor of Physics with a heavy admin load.

[Alan @PhysicalAlan]

@ucu Campaign to put them on the national pay scale then…..it’s much fairer that way

[Alan @PhysicalAlan]

@ucu Or do you mean postdoctoral researchers, also mostly funded by external organizations from grants, that form a major part of post qualification training and are present in most developed countries? Do you want to change the entire grant system? That’s outside university control

[Alan @PhysicalAlan]

@ucu “Two-thirds of research-only academic staff”…. Also know as research fellows, usually externally funded by a significant grant application written voluntarily by the candidate, and a vital stepping stone to permanency that most get.

[Alan @PhysicalAlan]

@Pingosaurus A colleague arranged a 5pm meeting on Friday evening last week, for a PhD supervision (me, the other supervisor, PhD student and external sponsor). I just ignored it.

[Alan @PhysicalAlan]

@greg16676935420 Dude, you should be more worried about how the water doesn’t fall off the edge of the map.

[Alan @PhysicalAlan]

@elonmusk Says the dude with £400bn who could literally feed the world.

[Alan @PhysicalAlan]

@simonmaechling Hi
PhD physicist here:

Ever heard of a photon?

[Alan @PhysicalAlan]

@tom_worthington @timeshighered @PressClubAust Yes there’s some input from professional associations and employer’s associations, there are consultations, but it all gets put into a sausage machine and what comes out comes out. I’m not convinced the current iteration of rules (for next time) is better then the last :)

[Alan @PhysicalAlan]

@tom_worthington @timeshighered There are some concerns that the next one, the changes to the way papers are chosen will disproportionately improve the score of some universities over others, increasing the already large (and unfair) divide in research income between the “top” and everyone else.

[Alan @PhysicalAlan]

@tom_worthington @timeshighered Sort of. There was an internal sift of the “best” papers for each UoA. These were then assessed at panel and scored. It’s one of the many inputs into REF, last time the highest weighted, but not the most important for determining rank.

[Alan @PhysicalAlan]

@AlexWilsonAM @MayorofLondon Not on the two I was on yesterday. So not ever, just some.

[Alan @PhysicalAlan]

@timeshighered Given the current crisis in university funding, it’s an interesting concept but will go nowhere until the funding model is changed.

[Alan @PhysicalAlan]

@elonmusk You do realize the rapid passing of executive orders, under your watch when you were chums with him, is exactly the same. Why did it take you so long to come out? Are you also going to criticize what happened in the first few months of his term when you were ok with it all?

[Alan @PhysicalAlan]

@The_Real_Bradaz @Huffybuffy125 @kokeshimum It wasn’t a holiday, and this is the norm, I travel there regularly. Clearly you haven’t travelled much. Sure, *some* Muslim countries are quite restrictive, I was in one last year, but don’t tar all countries with the same brush.

[Alan @PhysicalAlan]

@kokeshimum I work in London. I see lots of women wearing a burqa/niqab (very similar) on my 1 mile walk to work. That’s just one road, in one area, of a very large and diverse city. Scale that up to other streets/areas, and other cities, and you will find it’s more than a few hundred

[Alan @PhysicalAlan]

@kokeshimum Work*

[Alan @PhysicalAlan]

@Huffybuffy125 @kokeshimum @The_Real_Bradaz I was in a Muslim country earlier this week, and there were plenty of women with “naked” arms and legs; low cut tops too. I was in a different Muslim country in April, the same. These were not foreigners, but locals.

[Alan @PhysicalAlan]

@tom_worthington @timeshighered Not every paper produced is reviewed, only those the university considers are the best papers. The number of papers submitted is determined by a number of factors. Including number of staff. There is therefore a large sifting process prior to submission - huge amount of work

[Alan @PhysicalAlan]

@tom_worthington @timeshighered We have to, government/regulators says and so we do. There are some indirect benefits too - having a high GPA raises international reputation and allows universities to advertise, which can result in more (international) student recruitment etc