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Dr Joseph Lyman of the Astronomy and Astrophysics group is one of four Warwick academics to receive a highly-prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship in the third round of awards.

Joe's project, titled "New frontiers in transient astrophysics: gravitational-wave multi-messenger events and exotic stellar explosions", is devoted to furthering our understanding of the changing night sky. Astrophysical transients, in the form of exploding stars as supernovae, and merging neutron stars as gravitational-wave events, are some of the most energetic events in the Universe and probe physics under conditions far beyond our capabilities on Earth.

As we don't know where or when these events will occur, the fellowship will develop and exploit the Warwick-led Gravitational wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) project as a discovery machine to find new and exotic transients. It will also create of a rapid network of telescope facilities to follow these GOTO discoveries, making it possible to take detailed observations almost immediately after discovery, and allowing us to open new windows in study of these extreme explosions.

Joe joins Dr Heather Cegla and Dr Benjamin Richards as Future Leaders Fellows in the Department of Physics. See https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/ukri_fellowships_awarded_to_four_university_of_warwick_academics1 for a Warwick press release.

The department congratulates:

• Richard Beanland
• Tom Hase
• John Hanna, and
• Neil Wilson

on their promotion to Professor.

The department is pleased to confirm that the following staff have been awarded promotions as of 1 June 2020 (new position in brackets):

Animesh Datta (Reader)
Nick Hine (Reader)
James Lloyd-Hughes (Reader)
James McCormac (Senior Research Fellow)
Michael Pounds (Associate Professor)
Dimitri Veras (Associate Professor)

Congratulations to all.