On Thursday 9 February, Professor Stuart Croft (Vice-Chancellor) visited the department to present a Warwick wow award to Ally Caldecote (Outreach Officer) and Tishtrya Mehta (post-doctoral researcher) for their continuous hard work and dedication to the annual Christmas Lectures. The Christmas Lectures take place in early December at Warwick Arts Centre, and have been running for 12 years. To date, over 17,000 people have attended.

We spoke to Ally, founder of the Christmas Lectures who said:

"It is an honour to see the appreciation for the Christmas Lectures! They are a labour of love each year with lots of different people coming together to showcase fantastic science and scientists. As a physics department we are deeply committed to sharing what we do with as many as possible and if we can do it wearing Christmas jumpers and Santa hats then that's just a bonus!"

Alongside Ally, Tishtrya plays a pivotal part in the Christmas lectures each year. She said:

"Being a part of the Christmas Lectures Team has been such a highlight of my time at Warwick - I've loved watching the most incredible shows put together by passionate and talented scientists and technicians and learning about the most bizarre and wonderful research, such as the secret life of Brussels sprouts!

It's a joy to see the lectures being awarded and to hear the well earned praise for Ally Caldecote and Paul Warwick (China Plate Theatre) who have been indispensable in making the lectures so full of life and loved by so many."

The wow award celebrates amazing work, projects, and achievements at the University.

Find out more about the university award and watch the video.Link opens in a new window

Professor Sandra Chapman has been awarded the 2023 Johannes Geiss Fellowship of the International Space Science Institute.

The International Space Science Institute at Bern, Switzerland is an Institute of Advanced Study where scientists from all over the world meet in a multi- and interdisciplinary setting to reach out for new scientific horizons. The main function is to contribute to the achievement of a deeper understanding of the results from different space missions, ground based observations and laboratory experiments.

Chapman's research at ISSI during the fellowship will focus on the fundamental physics of plasma turbulence with particular emphasis on recently launched missions - NASA's Parker Solar Probe and ESA'a Solar Orbiter - which will explore the sun's expanding atmosphere- the solar wind - close to the sun, to within the orbit of Mercury, for the first time. Plasma turbulence may provide the answer to one of the outstanding mysteries of the solar system, how the solar wind is heated and accelerated.

One Johannes Geiss Fellowship is awarded each year. The fellowship is named for the founder of ISSI, a distinguished space plasma physicist who pioneered interdisciplinarity.   

The 1st issue of the "Poincare" magazine, written by a team of Maths & Physics UG students, has recently been printed and is now also available online. A wide variety of articles has been included, from knots and topology to an introduction to quantum electrodynamics. Several pages of puzzles and problems are also scattered throughout, including a set of chess puzzles, and a cryptographic cipher for readers to crack.

We are proud to announce our Athena SWAN Silver Award has been renewed for another five years. We would like to thank everyone who has helped with the progress we have made advancing gender equality in the department, with our Women in Physics group highlighted as an example of good practice.

Read our submission.

We would like to congratulate all of our new undergraduate and postgraduate students who are due to join us this academic year, as well as welcoming back all of our returning students. We are also looking forward to welcoming our new members of staff that will be joining us throughout the year.

Congratulations to Fatemah Jafar and Tishtrya Mehta for being announced the winners of Warwick's first student award for Public and Community Engagement.

Read more about Fatemah's and Tishtrya's contribution to Public and Community Engagement.