Condensed Matter Physics is delighted to announce that second year postgraduate student, Timothy Crothers, has been awarded the David Ryan Prize 2017 for the best presentation by a second year student at the annual poster session.

Many congratulations Tim.

Physics Newsletter Spring 2017

Our latest Department newsletter is now available to download in PDF format here (the file may not display correctly with Firefox/Chrome pdf viewers -- in this case save it to a file and open it with e.g. Acrobat reader or Preview).

Have a look at the wide range of work that we do in front-line research, teaching, public outreach and school education.

Congratulations to Professor Daniela Bortoletto who has been awarded an MPLS Equality and Diversity Award in the Best Initiative category for 'the development of the annual Conference of Undergraduate Women in Physics, an

Congratulations to Arnold Mathijssen of the Rudolf Peierls Centre who has been awarded the first Sam Edwards Thesis Prize by the Institute of Physics Theory of Condensed Matter Group. The thesis describes research on the “Hydrodynamics of Microswimmers in Complex Fluids and Environments”. Arnold graduated last summer and now holds an HFSP cross-disciplinary Fellowship at Stanford.

Congratulations to Professor Tony Bell who has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society for his outstanding contributions to science. Tony is best known for his pioneering work into astrophysical and laser-produced plasmas, as well as work looking at cosmic ray acceleration.

Further details can be found here

Oxford reflects fondly on Cassini as the end draws near

On Wednesday 26 April 2017, Cassini became the first spacecraft to ever plunge between Saturn and its innermost rings. In doing so, it came closer to the planet than any probe before it. This historic manoeuvre marks the beginning of the end, for what has been a landmark space mission.

BBSRC have announced the shortlisted finalists for their 2017 Innovator of the Year competition, which include Oxford Physics’ Achillefs Kapanidis and Bo Jing, who developed the Nanoimager, a high-resolution microscope based on detecting single fluorescent molecules.

A MECHANICAL ROUTE TO CELL DEATH

By exploiting analogies to ‘active’ liquid crystals Oxford theoretical physicists have contributed to discovering a mechanical mechanism controlling the extrusion of dying cells from layers of tissue.