Departmental news

The Terabotics project, led by Professor Emma MacPherson, which aims to integrate terahertz technology with surgical robotics to help improve cancer diagnosis and treatment has been shortlisted for the Engineer's Collaborate to Innovate Awards 2021.

Find out more about Emma's Terahertz Research Group. 

We would like to welcome our new academic staff members who have recently joined Physics. Please see our New Staff page for a photo and brief biography for each new academic.

It was with great sadness that we learned that our friend and colleague John Horsler had passed away on Saturday 2nd October after a long illness that he bore with great fortitude. He will be deeply missed.

Details of the thanksgiving service now on the website.

Congratulations to the following Physics staff on their promotion to Professor:

• Emma MacPherson
• Martin Lees

The promotions are in effect from 1 August 2021.

Congratulations to Michael Pounds (Senior Tutor/ Director of Student Experience) who has won a Warwick Award for Personal Tutoring Excellence (WAPTE). The WAPTE awards recognise staff who have made an outstanding contribution to the support of students through the University's personal tutoring system.

Many congratulations to Drs Elena Cukanovaite, James Gott and Samuele Ferracin, for their success in the 2021 PhD Thesis Prize competition. Elena won the Winton Prize for Astrophysics, James was awarded the Springer Thesis Prize, while Samuele is the recipient of the Faculty of Science and Department of Physics Thesis prize. Read on for more details about the prizes and their research.

Congratulations to the following members of Physics staff on their promotions:

• David Brown (Senior Research Fellow)
• Aruni Fonseka (Senior Research Fellow)
• Paul Strom (Senior Research Fellow)
• David Armstrong (Associate Professor)
• Anne-Marie Broomhall (Associate Professor)
• Andrew Howes (Associate Professor)
• Elizabeth Stanway (Reader)

All promotions are with effect from 1 August 2021.

It is with great sadness we announce that Professor George Rowlands passed away on 3rd April 2021. George contributed enormously to the life of the Physics Department over a period of more than 50 years and his presence will be acutely missed by all who knew him.

Professor Sandra Chapman (CFSA) awarded the 2020 Ed Lorenz Lecture for the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) – which will be one of the world’s largest virtual scientific conferences [1-17 December 2020]. The Ed Lorenz Lecture is given on topics in non-linear physics across all for space and geophysics. Lecture will explore how advances in fundamental physics can help quantify space weather risk.

Professor Pam Thomas, PVC (Research) and leader of the Ferroelectrics and Crystallography group in the Department of Physics, has been announced as CEO of the Faraday Institution (FI), the research arm of the UK’s £289m national battery challenge, following on from her 30 years as a member of academic staff at Warwick.

A founding member of the Board of Trustees at the FI since 2018, Pam is passionate about addressing the challenges faced by the wider energy storage ecosystem and the UK’s quest towards Net Zero.