Dr James Collett
MA (Cambridge) CASM (Part III Mathematics - Dist) PhD (Cambridge)
Job title: Principal Lecturer
Memberships and Appointments:
James Collett is a lecturer in the School of Physics, Astronomy & Mathematics. Before going to University, he worked at Pilkington's European Technology Centre as part of the team developing the UK's first holographic head-up displays for aircraft. His PhD work, at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, was on circulation invariants in stellar dynamics and included the discovery of the stellar dynamical analogue to fluid helicity. He worked at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder on magnetohydrodynamics problems before moving into the field of mental health where he worked in a series of care homes with people with learning difficulties. He took up a postdoctoral position in Oxford in 1995, working on changes in the populations of orbital families and their influence on the structure of galaxies, and then moved to Hertfordshire in 1997. His principal current research interests are in theoretical astrophysics, specifically in stellar and gas dynamics. He is also interested in digital imaging as a research and educational tool. He has promoted the use of relatively inexpensive equipment to a wide audience through talks to interested clubs and societies, schools, professional bodies and Royal Institution masterclasses. He was a co-investigator on the FDTL4 project LeAP promoting the use of problem-based learning in the physics curriculum, and has given talks on both this and visualisation in physics projects to the Institute of Physics. The outcomes of the LeAP project are now being applied internationally. He is secretary of the Institute of Physics Higher Education Group. He has worked on a number of funded projects with artists, filmmakers, photographers, and modelmakers. He appeared in a film installation at the International 3 Gallery in the 2007 Manchester International Festival. He has exhibited photographs from the series 'Dioptrica' at art fairs in Europe and North America. His work on halide film is carried by the Bleach Box Gallery, Cambridge.