Dr. Pier-Emmanuel Tremblay, Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics, has been awarded a 1.5 million Euro Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). The research project entitled "Evolution of white dwarfs with 3D model atmospheres" will soon recruit...

Coming hot on the heels of the Nobel Prize award for the discovery of neutrino oscialltions, the Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics 2016 has recognized five collaborations studying neutrino oscillations. One of them, the T2K neutrino oscillation project, has had major contributions from the Warwick T2K group headed by Dr Gary Barker and Dr Steve Boyd.

On November 8, representatives from the five experiments accepted the award in a televised event in the USA...

Dr. Rachel Edwards has received an ERC Proof of Concept Grant to develop a prototype system for rapid defect characterisation in components such as railway tracks, aeroplane engines, and oil & gas pipelines.

Dr Edwards was awarded an ERC Starting Grant in the first round of the scheme and studied interactions of ultrasound with defects with different geometries. The research has led to ideas which could improve detection of surface defects in industry, and she has been awarded an additional grant of €150,000 to develop a prototype system building on these results.

Congratulations to two postdocs in the Warwick ATLAS group, Dr Tim Martin and Dr Elisabetta Pianori, who have been awarded ATLAS Outstanding achievement awards. The awards were made for "enthusiastic and vigorous dedication to the implementation and commissioning of the complex ATLAS Run-2 trigger menu". More information on the ATLAS group at Warwick can be found here:
 
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/research/epp/exp/atlas
 
In the photo Elisabetta is third from the left and Tim is second from the right, pictured with other award winners and the Collaboration Board chair, Howard Gordon, on the left, and ATLAS spokesperson, Dave Charlton, on the right.

Congratulations to Robb Johnston for winning the inaugural Papin Prize for “Contribution to Infrastructure” at the 2015 Higher Education Technician Summit, which celebrated the skills, talent and experience of technicians from M5 Universities. The Papin prizes recognise the invaluable role played by technicians and are named after Denis Papin, a 17th century technician who worked with Robert Boyle and was one of the first technicians to publish in his own name.

Robb was nominated by the department for the longstanding contribution he has made to Physics.

Professor Valery Nakariakov has been awarded the 2015 Payne-Gaposchkin medal and prize by the Institute of Physics for his leadership and major contribution to the discovery of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) activity of the solar corona. His research has led to transformative changes in our understanding of the solar atmosphere, and to the creation and successful implementation of a new branch of solar physics - MHD coronal seismology.

This award is named after Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin who was the first person to show that the Sun is mainly composed of hydrogen, contradicting accepted wisdom at the time. It is made biennially by the IOP for distinguished research in plasma, solar or space physics.

Congratulations to Yorck Ramachers for being nominated and commended for this year’s Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence. He is one of 10 commendees who has been awarded a prize of £2,000, through the department, to be used to support teaching and learning activities. For more information please visit http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/ldc/personal/funding/wate/

Edoardo Carnio, 1st year PhD student in the theory group with Prof. Roemer, has been selected to receive the Alumni prize 2015 of Freiburg University, Germany.

Congratulations to Giorgos Petrou, Jeffrey Ede, Arif Ali and Rajesh Patel, a team of second year physicists who were runners up in the final of the nPower 'Energy Challenge' which was held at Warwick University last week. Over forty teams from universities throughout the UK initially entered the competition and entrants were asked to submit their business proposal to address the challenge of 'How RWE nPower could revolutionise the energy industry'.

The physics students innovative idea was to encourage nPower customers to buy into the provision of renewable energy by investing in 'myTurbine', an initiative where turbines would be crowd funded which would potentially appeal to both investors attracted by the annual dividend they would receive and customers who wanted nPower to commit to a low carbon emission energy supply. The panel of judges were clearly impressed with this imaginative proposal that was well researched and excellently presented. Giorgos, Jeffrey, Arif and Rajesh have all be offered an internship with nPower as a result of their success in the energy challenge.

Congratulations to Dr Nick D'Ambrumenil being selected among the 142 Outstanding Referees of the Physical Review and Physical Review Letters journals, as chosen by the journal editors for 2015.

Initiated in 2008, the Outstanding Referee program expresses appreciation for the essential work that anonymous peer reviewers do for our journals. Each year a small percentage of our 65,000 active referees are selected and honored with the Outstanding Referee designation. Selections are made based on the number, quality, and timeliness of referee reports as collected in a database over the last 30 years. The program will recognize about 150 referees each year, although larger groups were selected in 2008 and 2009. A full listing and further details on the program are available here:http://publish.aps.org/OutstandingReferees.