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Department of Physics

The Cavendish Laboratory
 

Members of the Department will be saddened to learn of the death of David Sun (Astrophysics) after a short period of ill-health. David joined the Astrophysics Group in 2005 having gained his Masters and PhD at Cranfield and his experience of precision engineering design and analyses were immediately brought to bear on a wide range of astronomical instrumentation projects at the Cavendish. He became the lead mechanical designer in the AP group, and built an international reputation working on projects at the Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer in the US, on the large cryogenic cameras for the Very Large Telescope in Chile, and most recently on the design and procurement for the HARPS 3 exoplanet spectrograph and the opto-mechanical design for the gratings for the ANDES instrument for the European Southern Observatory's Extremely Large Telescope.

David was a hugely engaged colleague who supported the work of multiple PIs in the AP group, working assiduously and often beyond the call of duty to further their science with generosity and humour. He will be sorely missed, as an outstanding mechanical engineer and generous colleague. We pass on our deepest condolences to his family at this sad time.

His family have set up a memorial page which can be accessed here, and they would very much welcome contributions (words or photos)  from  David's colleagues to remember him by. Whilst they are not requesting donations explicitly, if anyone feels strongly about doing so, the above page makes donations to the Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund possible, and any such gesture would be gratefully received.

David's funeral service will be held on Tuesday 15th November at 3pm at the Cambridge Crematorium West Chapel, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, CB3 0JJ. 

The service will start promptly and will be held in the Chinese language. Due to timing constraints regretfully it will not be possible to make the service bilingual. However, there will be English translations in the funeral booklet.

The family would very much welcome all of David’s colleagues to the service and ask that anyone planning to attend please RSVP to David’s son, Cheng Sun, by email to i@chengsun.uk in advance of the funeral.

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