On 8th October, the Nobel prize for Physics was awarded to Higgs and Englert for "the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider"...

Congratulations to Rebecca White who has won the student poster prize at the National Astronomy Meeting in St Andrews for her poster entitled First Observation of a Transverse Vertical Oscillation during the Formation of a Hot Post-flare Loop...

The winners of the Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence 2012/13 have been announced. The WATE awards recognise and celebrate excellence in teaching and support for learning at Warwick. Winners each receive £5,000 to further enhance their practice and will receive their awards at the Summer Degree Congregation.

Andy Howes is a Commendee.

For more information please visit http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/insite/news/intnews2/13_announced

Professor Marin Alexe from Warwick's Department of Physics, has received a Wolfson Research Merit Award form the Royal Society. For more information, please see the news article http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/insite/news/intnews2/marin_alexe_receives/

Congratulations to Max Grell, Chris Lamb, Joseph Pickering and William Hart, members of ‘Team Chivalry’ who represented Warwick University at the 2013 Npower Energy Challenge at the Royal Institution in London on March 18^th. The students applied for the competition by submitting a detailed response to the question ‘How can energy providers engage with customers more positively?’ and then delivered presentations at the quarter final, semi- final and final stages.

For Team Chivalry’s presentation in the final they described a ‘social reward scheme structure’ they had developed based on ‘gamification’ – this would encourage Npower customers to manage their energy use to reduce their bills and to develop social groups to gain rewards by developing community links, parents, for example, could use points they had accrued to buy resources for their local school.

Team Chivalry’s presentation received excellent feedback from the NPower executives on the judging panel for its innovative approach and the quality of their pitch and Max, Chris, Joseph and William were all outstanding ambassadors for their Department and the University. As a result of their achievements all of the students have been offered places on Npower’s Internship programme.

Congratulations to Val Nakariakov for winning the Best Module - Solar MHD.

Last week saw the first ever STARS of Warwick Awards take place on campus. The STARS of Warwick is Warwick Students’ Union’s take on a national student-led teaching awards initiative, where students can nominate lecturers and other student facing University staff for an award.

A committee of six students led on the whole process, choosing the award categories, the timeline, the venue for the event and everything in between. The student committee were also the ones who shortlisted the nominations and decided the final winners.

For the full list of winners see: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/insite/news/intnews2/stars_awards_winners/ 

University of Warwick astrophysicist Dr Andrew Levan has been awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in Astronomy and Astrophysics by the Leverhulme Trust.

The prestigious prize acknowledges Dr Levan’s work within the University’s Department of Physics on the brightest explosions in nature, gamma-ray bursts and supernovae, as well as studies of the distant galaxies where they are made.

The awards, with a value of £70,000 each, are given to outstanding scholars who have made a substantial and recognised contribution to their particular field of study, recognised at an international level, and where the expectation is that their greatest achievement is yet to come.

Dr Levan said: “I’m very honoured to have received this award, which will allow me to drive forward my research into some of the most extreme and enigmatic objects in the Universe”.

The prizes commemorate the contribution to the work of the Trust made by Philip Leverhulme, the Third Viscount Leverhulme and grandson of the founder.

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/university_of_warwick_astrophysicist_wins_philip_leverhulme_prize1

The Department of Physics has won the Athena SWAN silver award. This was presented to Sandra Beaufoy and Malcolm Cooper at an awards ceremony at the Royal Society on Thursday the 16th September. The Department of Chemistry also recieved a silver award and the University a Bronze award. There is only one science department in the country that recieved an Athena SWAN gold (University of York, Department of Chemistry). 

Athena SWAN awards recognise and celebrate good practice on recruiting, retaining and promoting women in science, engineering and technology in higher education. For more information please see the attached press release http://www.athenaswan.org.uk/html/athena-swan/news/?news_id=686