Professor Peter Gallagher

Biography

Prof. Peter T. Gallagher is a Professor in Astrophysics in the School of Physics, Director of the Rosse Solar-Terrestrial Observatory at Birr Castle, and Associate Dean of Research. Since joining Trinity, he has established a large and prolific research group that currently includes five PhD Students, four Postdoctoral Research Fellows, and one Senior Research Fellow, with nearly €4M in funding from the European Space Agency, the European Commission, the US Government, Science Foundation Ireland, and the Irish Research Council. Prof. Gallagher's group are world-leaders in solar physics and space weather research, and have made significant contributions to our understanding of how sunspots evolve and produce solar flares, how solar storms propagate in interplanetary space, and how shock waves are formed in the Sun's atmosphere. To date, he has co-authored nearly one hundred papers in high-ranking journals (h-index: 31), including Nature Communications and Nature Physics. Prof. Gallagher is a Member of the Institute of Physics (MInstP), a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (FRAS), and has served as Chairman of the Astronomical Sciences Group of Ireland (ASGI) and Vice-Chair of the Royal Irish Academy's Astronomy and Space Research Committee. He is Director of TCD's Rosse Solar-Terrestrial Observatory in Birr Castle and Head of the Irish LOFAR radio telescope consortium. He was elected to Fellowship of Trinity College Dublin in 2012.