Many congratulations to Dr Claire Rocks on her election to a Fellowship of the Warwick International Higher Education Academy.

A WIHEA Fellowship recognises and rewards outstanding achievements in learning and teaching and is an exceptional opportunity to engage with colleagues across the university, improve the student experience and make a genuine difference to Warwick through research, debate and policy formation.

We are delighted to report that Dr Theo Damoulas and Dr Gihan Mudalige have successfully completed their probations early, and become Associate Professors at the start of this month. Quoting from their probationary review reports,

Gihan has had a number of successes with attracting substantial research funding, most recently for two projects with AWE PLC, and one with Rolls Royce PLC. A further major success is Gihan’s Royal Society Industrial Fellowship, which will run over the next 4 academic years at 50% of Gihan’s time. ... Dr Gihan Mudalige is an outstanding and valuable member of the department’s academic staff, whose many likely future contributions to both research and teaching we are looking forward to.

and

Dr Theo Damoulas is a valuable asset to both Computer Science and Statistics departments in all of the research, teaching, administration and collegiality areas. Theo is already a next-generation research leader at the national and international levels, in particular enhancing the university's partnerships with the Alan Turing Institute, CUSP London, King's College London, and New York University.

it remains to say many congratulations!

Thursday 1 March saw the university's Mathematical Sciences Building project officially 'topped out': an event celebrating the construction as it reaches its highest point.

To mark the occasion, representatives of each of the Computer Science, Statistics and Mathematics departments decorated a central roof steel beam with an illustration of their subject. For our department, Professor Mike Paterson FRS drew his gadget for proving that the planar 3-colourability problem is NP-hard, a piece of research from the first decade of Computer Science at Warwick that is still fundamental today and being taught to our students. Professor Paterson commented:

I am delighted to have played a part in this momentous and happy event, that celebrates the many contributions of those involved in this project as well as those who have worked towards the three departments reaching this milestone. The state-of-the-art building, constructed by local people, will foster internationally leading collaborative research and teaching in our three rapidly growing subjects.