Departmental news

Many congratulations to Martin Costa for passing his PhD viva, with Prof Long Tran-Thanh (Warwick) and Dr Christian Konrad (Bristol) as examiners. Martin has worked on two different fundamental topics in algorithms - clustering and edge coloring. His work on clustering led to a Google PhD fellowship, and his work on edge coloring (the topic of his thesis) led to a best paper award at STOC. During his PhD spanning 3 years, Martin published 7 papers in STOC/FOCS/SODA, 2 papers in ICML/NeurIPS, and 1 paper in ICALP. We wish him all the very best for the next stage of his career.

University of Warwick Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Stuart Croft hosted members of the University Council and guests from across the University at an event to celebrate one of the university’s newest research centres, the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax).

Founded by Warwick’s Professor Arun Advani and Dr Andy Summers of LSE, CenTax made its public debut during the 2024 party conference season and was formally launched with a Parliamentary reception that autumn.

The Vice Chancellor explained why the event was a slightly belated anniversary celebration: “We were planning on having the Warwick launch in November last year – but we couldn’t because the Chancellor of the Exchequer decided to have the budget on that same day and Arun and his team were rather busy.”

Describing the event as a “fireside chat,” the Vice Chancellor put questions to Professor Advani before inviting questions and comments from the floor.

Arun explained how CenTax grew from his working partnership with Dr Andy Summers at LSE: “I’ve been working with administrative tax data since it became available to researchers about thirteen years ago. Eight years ago I teamed up with Andy, who is a lawyer by background. And one of the great things about this interdisciplinary partnership is that while I have a good understanding of the numbers and how to use the data, I don’t always know where to look in terms of the tax system to explore some of the really niche issues.”

As the team grew, their research developed and their work gained public attention it made sense to formalise the partnership into a research centre to benefit from a more unified voice and additional resources.

According to Arun, an unexpected benefit of adopting a more formal identity has been greater engagement with the machinery of government - an organisation seems easier to bring into the government’s consultation structures than individual researchers.

Arun explained how engagement can include taking the CenTax team to the new Darlington Economic Campus for a day of presentations and workshops – “walking them through what we know, how we know it, how we can feel confident about it and how they can use that information in – say – submissions to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) on spending proposals.”

“Given how much the fiscal numbers have ended up being a block on policy changes in the last few years, I think that’s the most powerful thing we can be doing at the moment.”

Invited to reflect further on how CenTax engages with government, Arun said: “The first thing to stress is that we are completely non-partisan. Before the last election we engaged with five of the major parties – in the main, they get in touch with us to ask for analysis. But often we do our own prospective work, on areas we think are important but others might not yet be considering. We also engage heavily with the civil service, which is where institutional knowledge is held in a way that outlasts the vagaries of the UK political system!”

“We engage carefully and thoughtfully with all of the different parties. We know the different interests that they have and what parts of our research they will engage over.

“It’s not always the easiest balance to manage. The first thing we do is help them understand where we as academics come from. They are used to a classic think tank that can be neatly put in a box – that’s a left think tank, that’s a right think tank. And we’re a kind of hybrid – a think tank in a university? And you’re a professor? What does that mean? It’s an interesting way into the conversation and a good way for us to explain that we are here to try and provide the best evidence."

“We try to start by listening a lot. What are they interested in? Why? The thing that we want to help any party with is not ‘tackling the problems we think the country has’ – it’s ‘tackling the problems they think the country has’. Finding the best evidenced solutions for their tax priorities.”

Reflecting on the experience of being in the eye of the political storm over inheritance tax changes, Arun said: “We don’t get to tell the government what to do. We say, ‘here is the current state of policy, here is what the effects of alternatives would be’ – and I think that is the proper role for us as academics and experts.

“The right place for us as experts is to give people – including the public, though the media –information, and then for MPs to debate in Parliament whether any policy trade-offs are worthwhile.”

Questions from the guests covered topics from public attitudes to tax levels, to whether there are any limits on political groups which academics could or should engage with, and what tax decisions were the best and worst in history.

• Visit the CenTax website to find out more about the Centre’s research and policy work.

We are pleased to share that the Department of Physics will be hosting a 2026 Sutton Trust Physics and Astronomy Summer School, led by Dr Lauren Doyle.

Our work experience will provide students with a broad insight into physics and what it would be like to work in a busy university physics department. You’ll spend time with our highly skilled research and technical staff learning about real-life physics problems and exciting research projects.

Applications are open to students in Year 10-12, and close at midnight on Sunday 1st March 2026.

Find out more about our programme and how to apply.

Academics at Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) hosted the department’s first dedicated artificial intelligence (AI) day, at the University of Warwick, in collaboration with NVIDIA and Dell Technologies.

With AI rapidly transforming industries and reshaping research, innovation, and skills development worldwide, the event was spearheaded by Dr Awinder Kaur, Head of Digital Technologies and Machine Intelligence across all education programmes at WMG.

Following discussions with representatives from NVIDIA and Dell about WMG’s AI vision, Dr Kaur identified the need for a strategic academia-industry engagement event focusing solely on AI.

Congratulations to Professor Tim Gershon who has been elected as the next international Spokesperson for the LHCb collaboration at CERN.

Find out more.

Following its successful launch last year, the UK’s only battery safety conference – Battery Safety UK – will return to the University of Warwick in May. Hosted by WMG, the event will bring together the brightest minds in battery research to help supercharge the future of energy.

During January, representatives from WMG met with MPs, local government officials, as well as staff and students from the WMG Academy for Young Engineers in Solihull, strengthening relationships across education, industry, and government.

Professor Anant Sudarshan and his co-authors Michael Greenstone (University of Chicago) Rohini Pande and Nicholas Ryan (both Yale University) have been awarded the 2025-26 UC Berkeley Haas Sustainable Business Research Prize for their work designing and evaluating the world's first cap-and-trade market for particulate matter, in partnership with authorities in Gujarat.

The researchers were awarded $10,000 for “Can Pollution Markets Work in Developing Countries? Experimental Evidence from India,” the top prize from the award’s total $20,000 pool. Their paper evaluates a randomized controlled trial conducted in partnership with the Gujarat Pollution Control Board that tested a cap-and-trade system for particulate matter emissions in Surat, India.

Their evaluation found that the emissions market reduced pollution by 20% to 30% while lowering abatement costs by 11%, providing rare experimental evidence that market-based environmental regulation can succeed even in low- and middle-income countries with constrained regulatory capacity.

The biannual UC Berkeley Haas Sustainable Business Research Prize was created to bridge the gap between academia and practice by recognizing research that offers promising, real-world solutions for advancing sustainable business. Anant's winning paper was selected from a competitive field of 100 paper nominations from around the world and judged by two committees to ensure both academic rigor and real-world relevance.

Professor Jonathan Weigel, an award-winning political economist, served on the Academic Selection Committee. He said: “This paper stands out for its combination of rigorous experimental design and engagement in real-world policy implementation.

“It provides rare experimental evidence that emissions markets can reduce pollution while lowering costs, even in contexts where such approaches are often assumed to be infeasible.”

• Read the paper in full: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/140/2/1003/8002857
• Pollution solution co-developed by Professor Anant Sudarshan reaches finals of 2025 Earthshot Prize
• World’s first particulate pollution market reduced pollution, cut costs of abatement and improved compliance with legal standards