Dr Roberto Trotta

I believe that communicating science clearly and effectively is an important part of a scientist's job. Cosmology is hugely inspirational for all of us. It connects us with the fundamental questions about the origins and meaning of the Universe. As professional scientists, we are privileged to be able to actually do cosmology as our day job. Sharing the excitement and the challenges of our work with the public is not only a pleasure, but also a our responsibility towards the taxpayers that ultimately make it possible for us to pursue those questions.

My communication of science activities range from public lectures to radio broadcasts and science journalism, from activities in schools to hands-on exhibits for the whole family (Left: talk given at AstroFest 2009. Picture credit: Max Alexander )

I am a lecturer at the Department for Continuing Education of Oxford University, a member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and I take part to the Science and Engineering Ambassadors scheme with talks in schools and other events.

In the last few years, I was an invited lecturer at the Marlborough College summer school and at Green College, Oxford, team leader for Oxford Astrophysics' participation to the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2006, Lord Kelvin award lecturer at the BA Festival of Science in 2007, presenter at the EuroScience Open Forum 2008, exhibitor at Science Oxford and at the Manchester Museum of Science, Royal Astronomical Society lecturer onboard the Queen Mary 2, invited lecteurer at the Festival d'Astronomie de Fleurance and scientific advisor for the Science Museum (London) and the Deutsches Museum (Munich).

I am a freelance science journalist with over 10 major features published in national magazines, four of which were cover stories. I have made several media appearances, including local and national radio shows. I took part to BBC Radio 3's "Future generation thinkers" series with an essay on dark energy and the place of humankind in the Universe and appeared in a radio talk show on the Swiss national radio.

I am also interested in the common ground between science and art, and in finding new, surprising ways of marrying these two complementary ways of looking at the world.

You can find below more information about my past and future activities. If you have any idea, suggestion or proposal, please do contact me.

Articles in science magazines and online 

Dark Matter: Probing the Arche-Fossil. A conversation with the philosophical magazine COLLAPSE

From the Editorial Introduction by Robin MacKay to COLLAPSE Vol II (March 2007):

It is perhaps owing in part to his relative independence from the philosophical issues at stake here that our interview with theoretical cosmologist ROBERTO TROTTA serves in many ways as the centrepiece of this discussion. Following as it does upon the more abstractly philosophical discussions of the previous two papers, and yet circling around essentially the same issues, this interview serves to lend instructive insight into the transformation which ostensibly purely a priori philosophical problems undergo when transposed into the concrete contexts of scientific research programmes. 

It would be impossible here to provide more than the barest sense of the content of this lengthy conversation, which we feel sure will repay repeated reading. [...] this conversation provides an invaluable perspective upon the problems surrounding the determination of ‘ancestral phenomena’ (Meillassoux’s ‘arche-fossil’) from the privileged ‘insider’ vantage-point of someone immersed in their empirical study and scientific interpretation on a daily basis.

Touching as it does upon everything from the evidence for and ontological status of ‘dark matter’ through string theory, anthropic reasoning, inflationary cosmology and the meaning of concepts of time and space in cosmological contexts, this interview not only lends a much-needed sense of concreteness and specificity to the problems introduced by Brassier and Meillassoux, but also provides a helpful and readable introduction to the most up-to-date problems and findings of contemporary cosmology. 

Download here the first 4 pages of the interview (pdf, 60KB) 

To read the whole interview, visit the site of COLLAPSE and purchase Volume II or subscribe to COLLAPSE

Book reviews 

• Statistical challenges in modern astronomy IV (ASP Conference Series, Vol 371) Review appeared in The observatory , May 2008.
• The Oxford book of modern science writing (Richard Dawkins, Ed), OUP Review appeared in Oxford Today, 21, 1 (2008), 53.

Articles appeared in "Le Scienze" (italian edition of Scientific American), in Italian 

• Cosmologists scoop Nobel Prize for Physics 2006 (Nov 2006) 
• Giant telescopes of the future: the Square Kilometer Array (July 2006) 
• Latest news from the baby Universe. New results from the WMAP satellite (June 2006) 
• Interview with James Lovelock (April 2006) 
• Listening to cosmic sound (January 2006) 
• Looking at the Universe through neutrinos (with Alessandro Melchiorri, December 2005)

Article appeared in "Newton" (in Italian) 

• The trouble with strings  interview with Lee Smolin (cover story, Nov 2007) 
• Before the Big Bang (cover story, Sept 2007) 
• Mapping out the invisible Universe (cover story, April 2007) 
• The anthropic principle: Interview with John Barrow (cover story, October 2006) 
• Modified gravity (April 2006) 
• Killer asteroids (January 2006) 
• The Universe's mysterious past (October 2005) 
• Einstein's legacy (June 2005)

Online articles for scitizen.com 

• Does the Universe need humankind? (December 2006) 
• Shedding light on dark energy. Clever ways of observing invisible stuff (January 2006)

Radio and TV appearances 

• Future Generation Thinkers, BBC3.  You can listen here to a BBC Radio 3's "Future Generation Thinkers" programme (which aired on Nov 7th 2008) where I discuss dark energy and the place of humankind in the cosmos.
• Millevoci, Swiss National Radio, Rete 1.  A participation to a morning talk show on Swiss National Radio on Aug 5th 2009.
• Il Giardino di Albert. A participation to a science talk show on Swiss National TV (RSI) in Nov 2009.
• Baobab, Swiss National Radio Rete 3. An interview on a science talk show on Swiss National Radio, Sept 14th 2010.