Member's statement: Dr Stephen Taylor
Member's statement by Ms Sorcha Eastwood on .
- MLA
- Ms Sorcha Eastwood
- Party at the time
- Alliance Party
- Date
- 13 February 2024
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Dr Stephen Taylor
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4206116
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I want to draw the House's attention to Dr Stephen Taylor, a constituent of mine who is a Lisburn man born and bred. He has followed in the footsteps of Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell and has been involved in groundbreaking research on pulsars through, if I get the science part right, the North American Nanohertz Observation for Gravitational Waves. Dr Stephen Taylor was educated at Wallace High School in Lisburn and was a first-generation university student. I spoke about that yesterday in my maiden speech, and I am extremely passionate about giving our young people all the chances that they can have in life. Here we have a young person who came from humble beginnings, a first-generation university student, who has gone on to not just break strides and break through that glass ceiling but is actually delivering on the world stage to new scientific heights. It is important that we take the opportunities. As much as we talk about some of the challenges that face us, which is right, it is also important that we take the opportunity to congratulate and note those people from our community who are going out and making those strides on the world stage. Science has much more of a role to play for our young people through the opportunities that it gives.
In his studies, Dr Stephen Taylor has followed on from the work of Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, looking at pulsar timing arrays in his PhD. Those are the sorts of things that we will need our young people in Northern Ireland to do if we are serious about tackling the issues of research, innovation and making people's lives better. Thank you for your indulgence, Mr Speaker, in allowing me to acknowledge this success. I congratulate Dr Stephen Taylor — I want to get the proper name of what has occurred — on the University of Cambridge and the Royal Astronomical Society's naming him their 2024 Eddington lecturer.
326 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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