Departmental news

The discovery was first published online in Nature Astronomy in April, by then PhD student, and now postdoc, James Munday and has since been featured on the cover of Nature Astronomy’s June issue. James, supervised by Dr Ingrid Pelisoli and Prof Pier-Emmanuel Tremblay, discovered a type Ia supernova progenitor within a mere 50 parsecs. Type Ia supernovae are standardisable candles used to measure cosmological distances and were instrumental in the discovery of the accelerated expansion of the Universe (Nobel Prize in Physics 2011).

Congratulations to Professor Valery Nakariakov, from our Centre for Fusion, Space & Astrophysics who has been awarded £2.1 million from the European Research Council (ERC). The ERC AdG project aims to transformatively advance our understanding of the long-standing mystery of why the Sun's outer atmosphere - the corona - is heated to millions of degrees.

Dr Samuel Seddon has recently published his paper in Physical Review B titled 'Ferroelastic control of magnetic domain structure: Direct imaging by magnetic force microscopy.'Link opens in a new window

A major new quantum technology research hub which is being led by researchers from University College London (UCL) and the University of Cambridge has been launched in collaboration with researchers from the University of Warwick.

On Tuesday 16th April, Professor Chapman was presented her award at the annual EGU meeting in Vienna with over 15,000 people in attendance. Sandra also gave a lecture titled ‘Multiscale matters: when coupling across multiple scales drives the dynamics of solar system plasmas.’

Congratulations to Professor Don Pollacco who has just been awarded £3 million from the ERC to develop a ‘digital telescope’ that will be capable of producing a highly sensitive continuous movie of the night sky.

Find out more.

The worldwide COVID pandemic was a crisis unparalleled in recent history. The efforts of scientists and researchers around the world in mobilising to find vaccines, treatments, and explanations were equally unparalleled. In this article, we tell the story of one such research collaboration using their collective expertise in protein-modelling to help build a picture of the SARS-CoV-2 virus structure. Moreover, using modern collaborative writing tools, they were able to write up and publish their work during the height of the pandemic.

Professor Emma MacPherson was on Sky News International showcasing a new skin scanner which has the potential to transform the way skin cancer is detected and treated. Using pulses of light from the terahertz part of the light spectrum it will detect how far cancer that is not visible has spread under the skin. This will mean that surgical removal can be better planned, more effective and faster. This in turn will reduce patient waiting times and improve patient outcomes as well as reduce costs to the NHS.

Watch the Sky News video.

We would like to wish Professor Steve DixonLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window a huge congratulations as he has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering during their AGM on 20 September 2022. Steve is a Professor and Director of the Centre for Industrial Ultrasonics.

Read more about Steve's pioneering research.

Professor Steven Brown has commented in Chemistry World on the announcement of funding of more than £16 million from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) for a state-of-the-art 1.2 GHz spectrometer, building on the two 1 GHz systems that are already in place in the UK, including at the UK High-Field Solid-State NMR Facility.

Find out more in Chemistry World.