Professor Pat Roche
Interim Principal
Patrick graduated from University College London with a BSc in 1976 and a PhD in 1982. He worked at the Anglo-Australian Observatory from 1979 to 1985, before returning to UCL as a research fellow. He relocated to the Royal Observatory Edinburgh in 1986, before moving to work in Oxford on a two-year secondment in 1989 on a proposal for a UK 8-m telescope. The proposal was approved and led to the UK involvement in the Gemini Observatory, and his role as UK Project Scientist during the telescope construction from 1995 to 2001. He was appointed as a University Lecturer and Tutorial Fellow in Physics at Hertford College in 1996, and was elected Interim Principal in November 2024.
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Research interests
Patrick’s astronomical research is focussed on the nature, properties and evolution of interstellar matter and star formation processes. He led pioneering investigations of the mid-infrared emission from a range of astronomical objects, characterising their properties and interpreting the dominant processes. This pioneering work is now being followed up with the James Webb Space Telescope.  He has characterized the emission of low mass stars and brown dwarfs, identifying clear spectral signatures of youth which are used as age diagnostics. He has been intimately involved with a number of instrument projects, including the UCL liquid-helium-cooled mid-infrared spectrometer, the Michelle spectrometer for UKIRT and Gemini , WHIRCAM for the WHT on La Palma and UFTI on UKIRT in Hawaii, and contributed to numerous instrument design reviews.
Patrick has made many contributions to the development and governance of astronomical observatories. In the 2000s, he was Board chair of the UK Infrared Telescope in Hawaii and the Anglo-Australian telescope in NSW. He was a UK delegate (2002-2017) and Council President (2015-2017) of the European Southern Observatory and member (2009-2017) and chair of the Board (2015-2016) of the Atacama Large Millimetre Array, which was the first global major observatory and was constructed at 5000m in the Chilean Altiplano.
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Publications
To find out more about Patrick’s publications, please see his entry in the NASA ADS database.