Contest entries for the Big Dish will be judged by an exciting and prestigious international panel of judges recruited from our partners and from the wider Irish and international space community.

Lars Lindberg Christensen, ESO Head Education & Public Outreach Dept. IAU Press Officer

Lars is a science communication specialist heading the European Southern Observatory (ESO) education and Public Outreach Department (ePOD) in Munich, Germany.

He is responsible for public outreach and education for the La Silla-Paranal Observatory, for ESO’s part of ALMA (the largest and most expensive ground-based astronomical project currently under construction), for the European Extremely Large Telescope E-ELT (the largest optical telescope in planning), for ESA’s part of the Hubble Space Telescope and for the International Astronomical Union Press Office.
CIT Blackrock Castle Observatory is Ireland’s official media and outreach representative for ESO, the European Southern Observatory

PJ King, Director General ReResearch, Virgin Galactic Founder Astronaut

PJ King is a Virgin Galactic Founder Astronaut which means that he’s working on projects to bring regular people into Space! He’s a technology entrepreneur involved in early stage scientific and engineering projects such as ReResearch as well as his work in developing the budding space tourism industry. ReResearch works on high-risk, high reward research that can lead to breakthrough industrial applications.

Leo Enright, Space Correspondent

Leo Enright is one of a handful of journalists in the world who has covered the Space Shuttle programme since it began. He is a former Head of Radio News with the Irish national broadcaster, RTE and has been the BBC’s correspondent in Ireland for more than a decade before resigning to concentrate on personal projects in the area of public understanding of science.

Leo has broadcast live commentaries on every major space event since the first Moon landing. When the Shuttle Program was first announced in 1972 at Mission Control in Houston Leo was there. He was also present in Cape Canaveral in 1981 when the first shuttle Columbia launched and was standing in the desert when the shuttle landed back in California. When NASA launched Atlantis, their final shuttle launch Leo was there for that too!

Rory Fitzpatrick, CEO, National Space Centre

The National Space Centre is the home of the Big Dish, located in Midleton, Cork.

The National Space Centre is a private company supported by Enterprise Ireland, and was set up in 2010 to redevelop Elfordstown Earthstation, and to relaunch Elfordstown as a world class carrier grade commercial teleport and centre of excellence for space research.

Matt Cotterell, Head of School of Mechanical & Process Engineering, CIT

The sensors, radio detectors and spectrum analyser on the Big Dish and related projects are in association with the School of Mechanical & Process Engineering at Cork Institute of Technology .

CIT Blackrock Castle Observatory are in partnership with NSC to bring astronomy outreach from the Big Dish at Elfordstown to schools in Ireland.

Ann Fitzpatrick, ESERO Ireland

Ann manages the European Space Education Resource Office (ESERO) which develops and distributes space-themed educational materials from ESA, the European Space Agency, for teachers, as well as forging links within industry groups and organisations that are working in the space sector here in Ireland. This includes recent teacher training at Blackrock Castle Observatory.