Departmental news

Gavin Bell, together with Cellist Nick Roberts from Warwick’s Coull Quartet and departmental colleagues Edwards, Harrison, Pounds and Roemer, has been awarded an IATL fellowship to “develop interdisciplinary teaching material around the links between science, mathematics and music“. The aim is to engage with students and academics across different faculties and to plan interdisciplinary undergraduate teaching in the area of science/maths/music. The fellowship builds on last year’s joint premiere of Edward Cowie’s Quintet for 21st Century Oboe and Quartet “The Colours of Dark Light”, a work directly inspired by physics. Congratulations to all involved in the fellowship!

Caroline Shenton Taylor who was a physics undergraduate has won the UK final of the Fame Lab competition and now will be involved in the international final at the Times Cheltenham science festival. Caroline was one of our undergraduates and did her PhD on Compton scattering under Jon Duffy.

A couple of 3rd year students were good ambassadors for the physics department as they won the recent nPower Energy Challenge competition...

It is with great sadness that the University and its Department of Physics reports the death of undergraduate student Yin Fei (Andrew) Chan, a 1^st year MPhys student who died on Thursday 9 January 2014.

Simon Pocock and Mohammad Che Rozenan were amongst the 2012-2013 recipients of the Giving to Warwick Prizes, for the Excellent 2nd Year Academic Performance category. Giving to Warwick Prizes are available thanks to the generous donations from Warwick's alumni and friends.

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.

Michael Lindon, currently on the 4yr M.Phys. Physics course in our department, has just won the James B Duke Fellowship of Duke University in North Carolina, USA. Duke is among the top 10 universities in the US and ranked 19th world-wide. These fellowships are awarded to a small number of students applying to (all) Duke PhD programs following a campus-wide competition. Winning the award is a distinction and an honor; the award recognises a student's academic achievement to date and reflects Duke University's view of their scholarly and research promise for PhD studies at Duke. The Fellowship carries a substantial stipend supplement per year for each of the first 4 years -- in addition to the financial PhD support at Duke. Well done Michael and all the best for your future PhD work at Duke University next academic year!

Postgraduate Research Student Open Day 

Wednesday 3 November 2010 from 10am

Places are limited.  For further information and to book a ticket please visit www.ucl.ac.uk/maps-openday

The prize for the best First Year Physics student is presented each year, named after, and in memory of, Dr Robert Pettifer. The winners of the Pettifer Prize for 2008/09 were Samantha J Parr and Mark S Skilbeck. The presentation was made on 18th March 2010, by Dr Pettifer's wife, Mary Pettifer.

Congratulations to Chris Jefferies, one of our first year undergraduates, who won the title of Young Technologist of the Year 2009 as part of last year’s UK National Science Competition. He also won a trip to NASA, and a significant monetary prize. As one of the 6 finalists, Chris also got a chance to visit the Diamond Light Research Centre. Chris has been invited to judge the first round of the UK Big Bang Fair in Manchester next month and has just attended a parliamentary reception. For more information see the news coverage link at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7926796.stm