Prof. Alan Smith, PhD
London, United Kingdom
Alan Smith was awarded a PhD at Leicester University in 1978 based on his X-ray study of supernova remnants. His work involved the payload development and flight of a Skylark sounding rocket from Woomera, South Australia. Between 1984 and 1990 he worked for the European Space Agency at its technology centre in the Netherlands as both an astrophysicist and as an instrument developer. His early career involved a combination of technology development (space flight hardware on European, and Russian satellites), project management and astrophysics. In 1990 he joined University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory, initially as Head of Detector Physics eventually becoming Director and Head of Department (2005). In 1998 he was made a Professor of Detector Physics. While at UCL he has been Director of UCL’s Centre for Advanced Instrumentation Systems (1995-2005), a Co-Director of the Smart Optics Faraday Partnership (2002-2005) and is presently founding Director of the Centre for Systems Engineering (1998-present). Alan was appointed Vice-Dean for Enterprise for the faculty of Mathematical and Physical Sciences in 2007, helped set up UCL’s Centre for Space Medicine in 2011 and is a member of UCL’s Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction board. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and of the Association of Project Management.
