Dr Cormac O’Raifeartaigh, a lecturer in physics in the School of Science at WIT, has been offered a one-year Visiting Fellowship at Harvard University, starting September 2010. The fellowship will involve participation in the Science, Technology and Society program of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Cormac’s topic of research will be a study of the public perception of the science of climate change and the root causes of climate change scepticism.
Cormac O’Raifeartaigh has extensive experience in the field of science communication, with regular articles in newspapers and magazines and an award-winning science blog ANTIMATTER.
Cormac has contributed articles to the Munster Express on Science and education.
He is a former chair of the RAW public science debates at Science Gallery and is currently a science ambassador for Discover Science and Engineering. On June 14th, he will give a public lecture at Trinity College Dublin; ‘Black holes, the Large Hadron Collider and the God particle’
The issue of global warming lies firmly at the intersection of science and public policy as climate change poses a serious threat to large areas of the globe and its populations. However, it is difficult for democratic governments to take action on the issue in the face of significant scepticism in the media and the wider public. In line with the aims of the Science, Technology and Society program at Harvard, the project will seek to enhance the quality of the public debate on climate change, to help clarify the main issues that lie at the heart of the science of global warming, and to provide relevant insights for policy makers.
