Emeritus Professor George Rowlands, who first came to Warwick in 1966, has clocked up more than six decades of research in theoretical physics - and he believes it’s the challenge of tackling complex scientific problems that has helped keep him young at heart.

Between 2-7 September 2012, Warwick has successfully hosted the Advanced Summer School in Solar Physics. The School was sponsored by STFC and organised by Dr Erwin Verwichte. 26 PhD students and early-career postdocs from the UK and abroad benefited from a series of lectures in all areas of Solar and Heliospheric Physics, taught by leading lecturers in the field. These included the local expertise of Dr Chris Brady, Dr Claire Foullon, Prof Valery Nakariakov and Dr Erwin Verwichte from the Centre for Fusion, Space and Astrophysics (CFSA) in Physics. A special thanks goes to Ms Taherah Nureen, who was the School's secretary. The School's website contains lecture handouts and photos from the event: http://www.warwick.ac.uk/asssp12.

On Tuesday 6th December the Physics department held a Christmas Lecture for the public. Teachers, school children and individuals interested in physics made up the 160 people who were excited to hear Daniel Scully talk about his research into neutrinos. Addressing a packed lecture theatre, he explained what different neutrino experiments look for, and the results from CERN that caught the headlines around the world. Together they considered the staggering implications if these results were confirmed and exactly why they caused such a sensation.

The talk was very enthusiastically received with 30 peopple queuing to ask Daniel questions at the end.

The feedback from the public was overwhelmingly positive, with Daniel's excellent communication skills and infectous enthusiasm, inspiring the audience. "Terrific" and "superb" were amongst the feedback.

Daniel has been inundated with requests to speak at further events, such as Cafe Scientifique, local schools and amateur astronomy groups.

If you missed Daniel's talk, you can watch it here.

Volker Keinhorst, a PhD student in the microscopy group, will become the first Warwick postgraduate to take up an industrial placement within the Midlands Physics Alliance Graduate School (MPAGS) scheme when he starts work in Banbury with Paintbox UK Ltd at the end of July. The aim of the placement will be to help Paintbox develop their automobile painting process including micro analysis via FIB SEM studies of paint/substrate interfaces.

This placement was made possible through the industrial contacts of the Science City Research Alliance. More information about the MPAGS Industrial Placements is available on-line and any students interested in taking part in this scheme should contact David Leadley.