News

The Universities of Warwick and Birmingham opened the first of their respective 1.2 GHz NMR facilities at Warwick, the result of a £23M investment from UKRI that solidifies the West Midlands as a powerhouse for NMR spectroscopy.

We really enjoyed celebrating with our fantastic graduating students on Friday. If you have Instagram you can watch our reelLink opens in a new window to see the highlights!

We would like to wish all our graduates all the best in their future work or study.

Click the link to view our 2024/25 prize winners.

Four of the leading Doctoral Training Centres (Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, HetSys) are hosting an event to answer questions, shatter myths and break stereotypes about PhD programmes.

Congratulations to Joe Creegen who received The Ogden Trust award for exceptional contribution to Physics outreach highlighting his dedication and ongoing support of the department's outreach work.

Professor Stefan Bon has been honoured by McMaster University with the prestigious Les Shemilt Lectureship for his achievements in chemical engineering.

Dr Iqbal Dulloo, currently a molecular cell biologist at the University of Oxford, has been awarded a prestigious five-year Medical Research Council (MRC) Career Development Award. He will join the University of Warwick’s School of Life Sciences in late September 2025 to launch his independent research group.

Dr Dulloo’s research explores how cells send and receive signals to maintain healthy function. When this communication breaks down, it can lead to diseases like cancer or neurodegenerative conditions. His recent discovery showed that an enzyme complex, previously thought to carry out a routine task, also plays a role in regulating gene activity by releasing a key messenger protein inside cells.

At Warwick, he will investigate how widespread this hidden signalling pathway is and how it may be exploited by viruses during infection.

Dr Dulloo said: “I am honoured to receive this award and delighted to be joining the University of Warwick. Understanding how cells communicate could unlock new ways to tackle disease. This fellowship will allow me to pursue fundamental questions in an exciting area of cell biology that remains under-explored but full of promise. I look forward to building a collaborative team and contributing to the vibrant scientific community at Warwick.”

Professor Miriam Gifford, Head of the School of Life Sciences, said: “We are delighted to welcome Dr Dulloo. His pioneering work will be a fantastic addition to our cell biology and host-pathogen research directions, and we are excited to support the next stage of his career.”

New research from WMG has found that the carbon footprint of collecting and refurbishing abandoned trolleys adds up to the equivalent of flying from London to New York and back twice!

“Thousands of shopping trolleys are reported as abandoned in the UK every year. When you multiply the carbon impact of retrieving each one, it becomes both significant and concerning,” explains Neill Raath, Assistant Professor at WMG, University of Warwick, who led the research.

Despite supermarkets introducing a range of methods to stop shopping trolleys leaving their premises, including coin slots and wheel-locking mechanisms, over 520,000 are still reported as abandoned in the UKLink opens in a new window each year, according to global trolley and retail equipment manufacturer, Wanzl.

Supermarkets rely on commercial collection services, typically using diesel vans to survey suburban areas, to collect and return the trolleys. Researchers at WMG assessed the environmental impact in order to tally the true cost of abandoning a trolley.

Five academics from Warwick Mathematics Institute will be among the list of speakers at the 2026 International Congress of Mathematicians, which is being held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

A new paper from the Royle lab describes a method to label membrane contact sites in living cells on-demand. Laura Downie found that the Lamin B Receptor (LBR), which is usually on the nuclear envelope, can be used as a multi-purpose contact site highlighter. With a bit of engineering, LBR can label ER contacts with the plasma membrane, mitochondria, lysosomes, endosomes, lipid droplets and the Golgi! We found Golgi-ER contact sites persist in mitosis, a time when the Golgi is broken down but the contact sites remain intact! As a bonus track, the paper contains a method to segment mitochondria and ER from volume-EM data using machine learning, and find their contacts in 3D.

Read the paper here.

New Study Maps 30 Years of Resilience Research
Systematic review highlights gaps and provides roadmap for future studies

Resilience is a powerful concept often used in science, policy, and everyday life. But what does it really mean, and how has it been studied over time?

The study, “A systematic review of conceptualizations and statistical methods in longitudinal studies of resilience”, led by Professor Dieter Wolke, Dr. Yanlin Zhou, and colleagues provides the most comprehensive overview to date of how resilience has been defined and measured over the past three decades.

This paper was recently published in Nature Mental Health. It systematically reviewed more than 190 longitudinal studies of resilience, covering over 800,000 participants across the life span. The key findings include:

• Only one in three studies clearly defined resilience, with varying interpretations as a trait, process, or outcome.
• Most research relied on variable-centred statistical methods and moderation models, with a strong focus on mental health outcomes following childhood or family adversity.
• Protective factors were often studied at the individual, family, and social levels, while genetics and neurobiological factors were rarely investigated.

The review calls for greater clarity in definitions and the use of multisystemic frameworks, and it provides methodological approaches to strengthen future resilience research. It offers a landmark for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to understand and promote resilience across the life course.

The authors commented “Resilience is an intriguing concept, but our review shows it has often been used inconsistently. We provide recommendations to help researchers design clearer, more robust studies that can ultimately improve resilience science, interventions, and policies to support vulnerable individuals.”

The full paper is available open access here: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-025-00479-3Link opens in a new window