Alasdair Koplick is a graduate of the University of Manchester (UOM) with a 2:1 Masters in Physics and Astronomy. His masters dissertation during his 4th year involved
spending one semester implementing new and building on existing methods
(eg: Ryan 2011) to identify brown dwarfs within datasets. This resulted
in a catalogue of brown dwarfs from the VISTA telescope. His
second semester of the project was spent using that catalogue to model the distribution of brown dwarfs in the Milky Way, followed by further analysis on the original
methods used, using synthetic data to demonstrate that a different method for identifying brown dwarfs was preferable. For more information, see dissertations and
presentations above. As part of his course in his third year, he also worked in a small group looking at the maths behind the skin patterns of the
Mbu Pufferfish and simulating Turing patterns, for which their poster was awarded 1st place (see Turing Patterns Project above).
Part of his third year lab also involved working with the fourty-two foot telescope at Jodrell Bank.
Prior to University, he attended City of London School for Boys, and during the summer taught sailing at
Wembley Sailing Club where he still teaches, building on six years of experience as an RYA instructor.
Outside of academics, Alasdair has also been writing music for the past nine years, most of which can be found on his
Soundcloud or
Spotify under the alias Aeix. This is coupled with eight years of experience in live sound for theatre tech, first with City of London School for Boys, and
later with the Manchester University Technical Theatre Society, or MUTTS. The latter of which, he
thoroughly enjoyed being the Social Secretary and dragging everyone to the pub every week. Through this, he has also volunteered at the Edinburgh Fringe for the past two years with
Paradise Green, helping to build their five venues the week before the Fringe begins, followed by
technical and front of house roles during running weeks. In 2019 he also solo-travelled to Japan for a month, working down from Tokyo to Osaka staying at hostels.
His other interests include jazz & piano, as well as bouldering (he can often be found at Yonder).
He also enjoys working on 3D level design, some of which can be found on his Steam profile or in
popular videos such as this one, as well as one-off projects such as this website.