On 10 December the European Research Council (ERC) announced the recipients of its latest Consolidator Grant competition: 301 top scientists and scholars across Europe. Funding for these researchers, part of the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, is worth in total €600 million. With this support, the new grantees will have a chance to build up their teams and have far-reaching impact.

Dr Mika Vesterinen from the Elementary Particle Physics group has been awarded over €1.8 million for a project to advance our knowledge of the fundamental physical forces of nature, using one of the particle detectors at the CERN facility. He said: “The Standard Model makes several precise predictions that are yet to be matched by experimental measurements of the same precision. The ERC funding allows me to build a team of experts that will confront this problem with innovative high-precision analyses of data from the LHCb experiment at CERN.

“A significant disagreement between our measurements and the predictions would indicate new physics beyond the Standard Model, which is the holy grail of particle physics.”

The Pettifer Prize is presented annually to the first year Physics student with the best overall examination performance. It honours the memory of Dr Robert Pettifer, who was a member of the Department from 1972 until his retirement due to ill-health in 2007.

The 2018/19 prizewinner is Adam Gore, who receives a copy of the Feynman Lectures on Physics. The prize was presented by Robert's wife, Mary, and daughter, Candice, who kindly donated an Amazon voucher to add to the prize.

The Department of Physics is delighted to host two highly-prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellows.

Heather Cegla will join the Astronomy and Astrophysics group working on the project "A Pathway to the Confirmation and Characterisation of Habitable Alien Worlds", and Benjamin Richards will join EPP to work on the "Search for diffuse supernova background in Gd based water Cherenkov experiments".

Congratulations to Richard Henshaw of the Soft Condensed Matter and Biophysics group, who has been announced as a 2019 winner of a Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence for Postgraduates who Teach (WATE PGR).

James Gott of the Microscopy group was named as a commendee.

Congratulations to the XMaS Science Gala team, comprised of Natacha Borrel and Monica Ciomaga Hatnean, who have made it onto the shortlist for the 2019 University Awards.

The winners will be announced at the Staff Summer Party on 24 June.

Congratulations to Steve Hindmarsh of the Electron Microscopy RTP and Steven Huband of the X-ray Diffraction RTP, both closely linked to the Physics department, who have been nominated for a Papin Prize.

The Papin Prizes recognise the skills, talent and experience of technicians in higher education and research, across the UK and Ireland in a select number of technicians out of 20,000 across universities in the UK.

Congratulations to the members of the department who have been nominated for individual and team University Awards, and the postgraduates nominated for WATE (PGR).

Physics nominees include Duncan Brealey, Rosalind Johnstone, Monica Ciomaga Hatnean, James Gott, Richard Henshaw, and a number of teams.

All undergraduates in the Department were invited to vote for who they would like to win the Physics Department Teaching Award 2017/18. The winner was Paul Goddard. The Head of Department, David Leadley, presented the award to Paul in one of his lectures this term.

Paul also won the Award in 14/15. The other winners have been: Neil Wilson (15/16) and Martin Lees (16/17).

The Pettifer Prize is presented annually to the first year Physics student with the best overall examination performance. It honours the memory of Dr Robert Pettifer, who was a member of the Department from 1972 until his retirement due to ill-health in 2007.

The 2017/18 prizewinner is Guy Moss, who receives a copy of the Feynman Lectures on Physics. The prize was presented by Robert's wife, Mary, and daughter, Candice, who kindly donated an Amazon voucher to add to the prize.

Congratulations to Michael Pounds, who has been appointed as a fellow of the Warwick International Higher Education Academy from 2018/19.

A WIHEA Fellowship recognises and rewards outstanding achievements in learning and teaching.

Michael joins Gavin Bell as WIHEA representatives from Physics.