Three Physics postgraduates have been recognised by the University for their excellence in teaching.

Sam Holt of the Superconductivity and Magnetism group is the winner of a Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence, and Jack Bradshaw (CFSA) and Sam Ferracin (Theory) received commendations.

Congratulations to all.

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.

Marin Alexe of the Functional Electronic Materials group has received a prestigious Humboldt Research Award, recognising the breadth and depth of his research career in Condensed Matter Physics. Marin will work with academics in Germany to undertake research projects at the Martin Luther University, Halle/Saale and Technical University, Darmstadt.

Further information can be found at http://www.humboldt-foundation.de/web/programmes-by-target-group.html

On 10 December the European Research Council (ERC) announced the recipients of its latest Consolidator Grant competition: 301 top scientists and scholars across Europe. Funding for these researchers, part of the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, is worth in total €600 million. With this support, the new grantees will have a chance to build up their teams and have far-reaching impact.

Dr Mika Vesterinen from the Elementary Particle Physics group has been awarded over €1.8 million for a project to advance our knowledge of the fundamental physical forces of nature, using one of the particle detectors at the CERN facility. He said: “The Standard Model makes several precise predictions that are yet to be matched by experimental measurements of the same precision. The ERC funding allows me to build a team of experts that will confront this problem with innovative high-precision analyses of data from the LHCb experiment at CERN.

“A significant disagreement between our measurements and the predictions would indicate new physics beyond the Standard Model, which is the holy grail of particle physics.”

The Pettifer Prize is presented annually to the first year Physics student with the best overall examination performance. It honours the memory of Dr Robert Pettifer, who was a member of the Department from 1972 until his retirement due to ill-health in 2007.

The 2018/19 prizewinner is Adam Gore, who receives a copy of the Feynman Lectures on Physics. The prize was presented by Robert's wife, Mary, and daughter, Candice, who kindly donated an Amazon voucher to add to the prize.