STEM for Britain is a major scientific poster competition and exhibition with an aim to give members of both Houses of Parliament an insight into the outstanding research work being undertaken in UK universities by early career researchers and was held at the House of Commons on Monday 6th March, 2023. Dr Lauren DoyleLink opens in a new window was selected as a finalist within the Physics category, to represent her research on stellar flares from solar-type and low mass stars where she found these events don’t correlate with starspots like they do on the Sun. Overall, this suggests other stars have much more complex surfaces compared to the Sun which posses questions when thinking about the habitability of other planets. The event was attended by people from across the UK with representation from many institutions and organisations including The Institute of Physics and Warwick. During the event, Lauren got the opportunity to chat to lots of researchers across Physics, Mathematics and Chemistry about their research, with lots of interest from the judges about her own research. Although Lauren didn't place in the competition she told us:

"Despite this, I am really glad I went as it was an amazing experience where I was one of 20 finalists selected to represent Physics research in the UK. I was extremely proud to represent the Physics department at Warwick University and hope that others from the department will apply to attend next year."

Congratulations to Lauren for representing the department and her research at the event.

Find out more about STEM for Britain.Link opens in a new window

Dr Xianguo Lu and Dr John Back have received funding from Science Technology and Facilities Council (STFC) for two PhD studentships for 3.5 years with top up funding provided by the University. The studentships will allow the students access to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), one of Europe’s largest multidisciplinary scientific research laboratories and the UK’s national centre for experimental particle physics.

The Particle Physics Department at RAL recruit 5-11 graduates every year, and each student is registered for a degree at a partner University.

Dr Back's project is titled "Physics studies for the Muon Collider target system" and the student will study and optimise the pion-to-muon production yields and radiation dose (energy deposition rates) for the target system that is being designed for the Muon Collider, which has great potential to be a future facility for high-energy physics research. The student would spend time both at Warwick and at RAL, working in partnership with Dr. Chris Densham's High Power Targets Group that is at the leading edge of target engineering, with the possibility of visits to CERN.

Dr Lu’s project is titled ‘Next-generation neutrino experiments in nuStorm’ and will evaluate and optimise the nuSTORM neutrino physics capabilities for processes in and beyond the Standard Model. The student would spend time both at Warwick and at the RAL with the possibility of long-term visits to CERN and working alongside physicists in the CERN neutrino group.

The positions will start in Autumn 2023. Applications are now open, with a deadline of 2^nd February. Find out more.

The nominations for the Physics Postdoc Prize 2021 were numerous and of an exceptionally high quality this year and it was incredibly difficult to select a “best” paper. After much deliberation the two winners are as follows:

Rosalie Thompson (Cresswell)

Importance of Water in Maintaining Softwood Secondary Cell Wall Nanostructure

Rosalie Cresswell, Ray Dupree, Steven P. Brown, Caroline S. Pereira, Munir S. Skaf, Mathias Sorieul, Paul Dupree, and Stefan Hill

Biomacromolecules 2021, 22, 11, 4669–4680 https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.biomac.1c00937

Water is an integral part of wood; living wood can be deformed beyond its yield point without breaking whereas dried wood will fracture. Rehydration of dried wood does not restore its properties yet, prior to this work, there was no molecular level picture of water’s role. Rosalie led this paper which uses state-of-the-art multidimensional NMR supported by MD modelling to determine the irreversible molecular changes that occur upon drying. It presents a model of a hydrated cellulose microfibril and the changes occurring during the drying and rehydration. The paper has been enthusiastically received with approaching 1000 article views since publication in late October.

Ingrid Pelisoli

A hot subdwarf–white dwarf super-Chandrasekhar candidate supernova Ia progenitor

Ingrid Pelisoli , P. Neunteufel, S. Geier, T. Kupfer, U. Heber, A. Irrgang, D. Schneider, A. Bastian, J. van Roestel, V. Schaffenroth and B. N. Barlow

Nature Astronomy, 5, 1052–1061 (2021) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-021-01413-0

Over twenty years ago, Type Ia thermonuclear supernovae were key to the discovery of the acceleration of the Universe, but their precise origin is a mystery. Ingrid led a paper published in Nature Astronomy presenting the discovery of a binary star whose 99-minute orbital period makes it an excellent candidate to host a thermonuclear supernova in the future. Ingrid and collaborators applied a combination of leading observational and theoretical techniques to map the future of this exciting system. With this detection, they constrained the supernova rate due to this particular type of binary, shedding light onto the origin of supernovae.