Plenary Lecturers

Prof.  Peter Thorne is the director of the ICARUS Climate Research Centre at Maynooth University, Ireland. He has been an author across the 5th, 6th and upcoming 7th assessment cycle reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He is the deputy chair of the Global Climate Observing System and Chair of its Atmospheric Observations Panel for Climate. He has formerly been a co-chair of the GCOS Reference Upper Air Network. He is a member of Ireland’s Climate Change Advisory Council and the chair of its adaptation committee. He has co-authored in excess of 120 peer-reviewed papers principally on observed climate changes in temperature and humidity and their attribution to human influence. He is PI on active grants covering data rescue, collation, harmonistaion and exploitation for the Copernicus Climate Change Service and national event attribution capabilities development for Ireland. 

Dr. Hisashi Abe received his PhD in physics from Kanazawa University. After working as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Research and the National Institute for Resources and Environment, he joined the National Metrology Institute of Japan (NMIJ/AIST) in 2001, where he has since been engaged in the development of primary standards and measurement techniques for humidity. In 2009, he was a visiting researcher at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland. He currently serves as the Chair of the Working Group for Humidity (WG-Hu) in the Consultative Committee for Thermometry (CCT), Vice Chair of the Technical Committee for Thermometry (TCT) in the Asia Pacific Metrology Programme (APMP), and Leader of the Humidity Working Group under the APMP TCT. His current research interests include the development of reliable techniques for humidity measurement and humidity standards using laser spectroscopy. 

Prof. Michel Piat is a French astrophysicist and professor specializing in cosmology and low-temperature instrumentation. Based at the AstroParticule and Cosmology (APC) laboratory in Paris, he has contributed to several major Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments, including the Planck-HFI satellite and the ground-based project QUBIC. With over 25 years of experience, he has led the development of cryogenic systems and bolometric detectors designed to observe the CMB with high precision. He has also played a key role in several space mission proposals, such as PRISM and CORE, and is currently involved in the LiteBIRD satellite project. As both a professor and researcher, Michel Piat works at the intersection of science and engineering, developing cutting-edge instruments to probe the early universe while actively mentoring young scientists.

Dr. Christof Gaiser received his diploma degree in physics at the “Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin” in the field of optical and electrical properties of semiconductors in 2003. Since 2004 he is with the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Berlin and received his doctor degree in 2008 in physics in the field of thermophysical properties of helium at low temperatures and gas thermometry. Since 2007 he dedicated his work to the determination of the Boltzmann constant as basis for redefining the base unit kelvin. He managed the international “Boltzmann project” which was the starting point for worldwide experiments leading to the successful redefinition of the kelvin in 2019. He is the head of the PTB working group “Cryo-and Primary Thermometry” and the chairman of the CCT working group on contact thermometry.

Dr. Andrew Todd is a Senior Research Officer at the National Research Council Canada, specializing in Thermometry and Radiometry. Since joining NRC in 2009, he has served as a Team Leader and briefly as a Director of Research and Development for NRC Metrology. He has worked in a number of aspects of radiometry and thermometry and has participated and led projects in NRC’s Quantum Sensors Program, Canada’s Quantum Research and Development Initiative and he is NRC Metrology’s lead on quantum research. He received a PhD in Physics from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2009. Andrew has represented NRC in various capacities on the Consultative Committees for Thermometry and Photometry and Radiometry. Andrew first attended TEMPMEKO in 2010.