Professor Rob Fender from Oxford’s Department of Physics gathered and interpreted radio observations that helped an international collaboration of scientists discover a gigantic cosmic particle accelerator.

Name: Belinda Nicholson
Job title: Postdoctoral Research Assistant

For the last ten years, we have thrown open the doors at the Department of Physics for our Stargazing event – an afternoon and evening of fascinating talks, hands-on activities and, not surprisingly, telescopes. Not wanting to disappoint this year, the team rose to the challenge of pandemic-proofing the event and Stargazing Oxford @Home was born.

Today, UKRI announced the launch of the Quantum Technologies for Fundamental Physics (QTFP) programme that will support scientists using quantum technology to study the universe in new ways in order to determine the nature of dark matter, detect gravitational waves and study the physics of black holes. Professor Ian Shipsey is Head of the Department of Physics at Oxford and has championed the programme since its inception:

Oxford’s Department of Physics is playing a key role in three of the seven quantum projects supported by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) including Quantum Sensing for the Hidden Sector (QSHS). With QSHS, we are joining forces with six other universities as well as the National Physical Laboratory on a multi-million-pound project which could open up a new frontier in physics.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell from the Department of Physics at Oxford has been awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s highest honour, the Gold Medal 2021. The medal recognises her extraordinary achievements and has been awarded not only for her personal research but also for her contributions to the field of astronomy generally.

Dr Peter Hatfield from Oxford’s Department of Physics is one of five academics to have been awarded a brand new fellowship from intelligence, security and cyber agency GCHQ. Charged with researching technology challenges relevant to national security priorities, Dr Hatfield’s work will be considering "secure" use of artificial intelligence – how to use AI to reliably understand data for global physics challenges.

Some 52 researchers from the University of Oxford have been named on this year’s Highly Cited Researchers list – eight of which are from the Department of Physics. The annual list identifies researchers who demonstrated significant influence in their chosen field or fields through the publication of multiple highly cited papers during the last decade.

The following academics from the Department of Physics appeared in this year’s list: Michele Cappellari, Yulin Chen, Laura Herz, Geert Jan Oldenborgh, Michael Johnston, Henry Snaith, Stephen J Tucker and Wei Zhang.