Professor Mark Thompson

Profile

I am an expert observational astronomer with a leading role in large area Milky Way surveys in the far-IR to radio spectral domain. I have led or worked on most of the recent Galactic Plane surveys, for example CORNISH, CORNISH-South, the JCMT Plane Survey, the SARAO MeerKAT1.3 GHz Galactic Plane Survey SMGPS), the Methanol Multi-Beam Survey (MMB), Hi-GAL, UKIDSS GPS, VVV, etc.

I am an accomplished senior academic with significant leadership and management experience, having been Dean of School and Head of School at the Universities of Hertfordshire and Leeds. In my management roles I consistently delivered across the whole portfolio of teaching, research, outreach and commercial activity.

Responsibilities

• Head of Astrophysics Group

Research interests

My research mainly focuses on the early lives of massive stars and the impact that they have on the surrounding interstellar medium. Massive stars are rare, evolve quickly and rapidly disrupt their surrounds via powerful winds and ionising radiation. While this makes them difficult to study, massive stars have a tremendous impact on their host molecular clouds, on galactic and perhaps even extragalactic scales. As stellar forges they enrich the chemical complexity of the Universe, and as sources of UV illumination and mechanical energy they disrupt their surroundings and scult the shape of the interstellar medium in galaxies.

Most of my work has been on assembling large statistical samples of Galactic (i.e. within the Milky Way) massive young stellar objects and the molecular cloud clumps that are the birthplaces of massive stars. These samples are most readily obtained through surveys of the Galactic Plane and I have been involved with all the major recent far-infrared (FIR) to radio wavelengths surveys carried out over the last decade. I combine data from these surveys to identify signatures of star formation including very young HII regions, massive molecular outflows and masers. Intriguing results are beginning to show that massive stars may abruptly "switch on" as very young HII regions appear to be rare. However there remain a number of observational biases and the jury is still out. I am heavily involved in the new generation of radio surveys with the MeerKAT telescope that will hopefully answer this unresolved question.

Professional memberships

• Fellow of the RAS

Research groups and institutes

• Astrophysics

Current postgraduate researchers

• Zoe Parker