Teaching & mentorship

Designing curricula, workshops, and supervision pathways that grow the next generation of radio astronomers.

Teaching philosophy

Jack blends research-driven content with hands-on data experience. He has lectured in astronomy for almost a decade and taught and assessed students for almost eight years, guiding them from first-year laboratories to advanced interferometry courses. His modules integrate observational planning, calibration practice, and open-source tooling so graduates are SKA-ready.

Course creation & delivery

  • Interferometry 101 (2022–24) — founded a postgraduate short course for Gauteng-based students covering radio interferometry fundamentals aligned with South Africa’s astronomy strategy.
  • Observational Astronomy (PHY 300) (2021–24) — re-designed the University of Pretoria’s third-year course with 40 lectures, eight workshops, and telescope practicums.
  • Radio Astronomy Honours course (2019–20) — founded and delivered 12 two-hour lectures and workshops introducing single-dish and interferometric techniques.
  • DARA lecturer & unit coordinator (2016–) — designed and developed the Unit 4 lectures and workshops on interferometric data reduction, co-coordinating the unit since 2020 and building the DARA repository website.
  • Observational Astronomy teaching assistant, University of Groningen (2017) — supported optical observing practicals using the 1 m telescope.
  • First-year laboratory demonstrator, University of Manchester (2014–16).

Capacity-building workshops

  • Leads DARA data reduction Unit 4 workshops in Zambia and Botswana; materials now form the official VLBI CASA guide for NRAO.
  • Delivers lectures at the European Radio Interferometry School (2019, 2022, 2024, and SOC for 2026) and CASA-VLBI workshops on calibration and wide-field imaging.
  • Invited lecturer at the SKA-VLBI workshop in Korea (2024) and the Australian VLBI workshop (2024).
  • Invited speaker on postgraduate wellbeing (PSANA seminar) and early-career skill-building across SKA partner countries.

Student supervision

Doctoral researchers

  • Astrid Henderson — High-redshift AGN with wide-field commensal VLBI surveys, Curtin University (co-supervisor, 2026–present).
  • Zhouyu Zhang — Advancing global geodetic, space, and radio astronomy infrastructure for societal and environmental challenges, Manchester (primary supervisor, 2026–present).
  • Mercy Mooketsi-Kobe — Multi-wavelength analysis of FR-II radio galaxies in the MJIVE-20 survey, Pretoria (co-supervisor, 2024–present).
  • Célestin Herbé-George — Testing AGN evolution and feedback with wide-field VLBI, Pretoria/Groningen (co-supervisor, 2023–present).
  • Kelvin Wandia — Radio emission from nearby solar systems, Manchester (co-supervisor, 2022–2026).
  • Dr Ann Njeri — High-resolution observations of faint radio sources, Manchester (co-supervisor, 2018–2022).

Masters & honours

  • Eric Ochieng — Interferometric stacking techniques to mitigate astrometric errors, Technical University of Kenya (primary supervisor, 2025–present).
  • Eunice Otieno — Persistent radio sources associated with Fast Radio Bursts, Meru University of Science and Technology (primary supervisor, 2025–present).
  • Katelyn Jordaan — Growth of dust grains in proto-planetary disks (2024–2026); previously proto-planetary disks with wide-band VLBI receivers (2023–24).
  • Anneke van der Dussen — Binary supermassive black holes in wide-field VLBI data (2022–2026).
  • Sibongumusa Wiseman — Star-formation and supernovae in Messier 82 (2023–2025).
  • Llewellyn Coetzer — Widening the field-of-view of VLBI surveys through advanced calibration (2023–2025); beam-mapping honours project (2022–23).
  • Thephilus Matsepane — Charting the unseen Universe: faint radio emission with VLBI (2021–2024).
  • Titan Harth — Calibration advances for faint supermassive black holes (2022–2023).
  • Jayde Bhana — Sub-kpc relativistic jets in distant, high-redshift galaxies (2022–2023).
  • Kelvin Wandia — SETI using wide-field VLBI (co-supervisor, 2021–2022).
  • Zane Lentz — Serendipitous supernova candidate analysis in GOODS-N (2021).

Jack has guided 13 postgraduate projects to completion, currently supervises seven students as primary or co-supervisor, and continues to mentor early-career researchers across Africa, Australia, and the UK.

Outreach & student support

Beyond formal teaching, Jack champions inclusive science communication: talks and workshops for the UK Amateur Radio Astronomy Society, public lectures in Botswana and Zambia alongside DARA teaching, Sci-Enza events in Pretoria, UK secondary-school workshops on UCAS applications, and primary-school sessions through the Out of this World project. He has represented ALMA at the Manchester Festival of Light and volunteers for science busking and ScienceX outreach with UoM Physics. He founded the Dr Jack Radcliffe Award for Physics to recognise top-performing students at Sir John Talbot’s Technology College.