On Wednesday 14th June the Physics Department welcomed 29 lower sixth students to the department to award them prizes. All Coventry and Warwickshire schools were invited to nominate their best student who was then presented with their prize by Professor David Leadley, head of physics.

The students enjoyed a variety of interactive demonstrations by members of the Physics Department followed by a lecture from Dr Rachel Edwards on her research.

Ally Caldecote, organiser said "It is a pleasure to award these prizes which recognise the hard work of the students across Coventry and Warwickshire. As a department who love and appreciate physics it is a delight to see the up-and-coming talent in the area."

Professor Sandra Chapman will be conducting research on space weather at Boston University in the USA, after receiving the Fulbright Lloyds of London Scholar Award.

Congratulations to Natalie Teutsch for winning first prize at the 2nd Year PhD Poster Presentations.

Second prize was shared by Alan Brunier and George King. Commendations to Phil Diggle, Enrik Nako and Matthew Green.

Congratulations to Rachel Edwards who has won the Public Engagement Award (Individual) at the University Staff Awards.

"Rachel probably does more outreach activities than any other member of staff in the Physics Department. This almost always involves doing activities in the evenings or at weekends. When she does outreach in the week, because the level of effort falls outside her expected role, it often means that she needs to do additional work outside normal hours just to catch up because she has undertaken outreach. Whilst we expect all staff to do some outreach, Rachel undertakes this with a level of effort and enthusiasm that goes way beyond what we could usually expect or hope for. Without Rachel’s involvement and leadership, many of the outreach events or activities that we have been able to deliver would probably not have happened.”

See http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/insite/uni_awards/winners2017 for a full list of winners from the night.

The department is delighted to announce that our Athena SWAN silver award has been renewed by the Equality Challenge Unit, for showing continued good working practices and gender equality in the Physics department.

For more information on Athena SWAN see http://www.ecu.ac.uk/equality-charters/athena-swan/ and http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/staff/working/juno.

Contact Sue Burrows if you have any questions.

Professor Marin Alexe  has been awarded grants for two research projects in the field of ferroelectricity – which may lead to breakthroughs in nanotechnology, and memory storage in everyday devices.

Professor Julie Staunton is among the 150 Outstanding Referees of the Physical Review journals, as chosen by the journal editors for 2017.

Instituted in 2008, the Outstanding Referee program expresses appreciation for the essential work that anonymous peer reviewers do for our journals. Each year a small percentage of our 57,000 active referees are selected and honored with the Outstanding Referee designation. Selections are made based on the number, quality, and timeliness of referee reports as collected in a database over the last 30 years. A full listing and further details on the program are available here: http://journals.aps.org/OutstandingReferees.

The Pettifer Prize for the best overall performance in the first year examinations was awarded to Michal Moravec for 2015-16 by Mary Pettifer and David Leadley, Head of Department.

Congratulations to David Leadley on receiving his 20 years long service award. David’s contribution was recognised at a special awards ceremony held on 11 October 2016.

Dr Neil Wilson was the recipient of the 2015-16 Physics Department Teaching Award as voted for by students. He was presented with the award by David Leadley, Head of Department on 11th October 2016. His name has been added to the list of prize-winners on the new board on the Physics Concourse.