Physics Department News

Dr. Rachel Edwards has received an ERC Proof of Concept Grant to develop a prototype system for rapid defect characterisation in components such as railway tracks, aeroplane engines, and oil & gas pipelines.

Dr Edwards was awarded an ERC Starting Grant in the first round of the scheme and studied interactions of ultrasound with defects with different geometries. The research has led to ideas which could improve detection of surface defects in industry, and she has been awarded an additional grant of €150,000 to develop a prototype system building on these results.

The 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics has been awarded jointly to Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald for the "discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass".

Further evidence and quantitative measurements of neutrino oscillations have come from the T2K experiment that uses the same Super-K detector and in which the Warwick EPP group plays an impartant role.

Further information and a popular article give more background behind this year's Nobel Prize.

Warwick Physics has risen to 4^th place in the subject ranking for Physics and Astronomy of the Good University Guide, published by The Times and Sunday Times on 18^th September 2015. The University of Warwick as a whole is in 6^th place overall in their league table of UK universities.

The latest 2015 National Student Survey (NSS) shows that 95% of undergraduates who completed courses in the Physics Department are satisfied overall with their course. This is the fourth highest satisfaction rating among Russell Group physics and astronomy departments.