About
Francesco Shankar is Professor of Astrophysics in the School of Physics and Astronomy and CHEP professional development lead at the University of Southampton. He is fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, fellow of the Higher Education Academy, fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and PI of a large-scale project in medical science aimed at optimising blood pressure measurements strategies. Professor Shankar is PI of a H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (https://www.bid4best.org/), one of the largest networks in the world working on supermassive black holes in a cosmological context, comprising 13 Marie Curie PhD students and about 20 academic and industrial partners. Professor Shankar also sits on diverse scientific Advisory Board Panels worldwide and is leading a massive outreach/public engagement project named Astera (Astera - A Cosmological Visualizer (soton.ac.uk)), an interactive, fully immersive 3D realization of the Universe.