The Oxford Physics Endowment for Graduates (OXPEG) was established in 2016 to provide scholarships and flexible support for our graduate students. Every year, some 100 students join the Department of Physics to undertake postgraduate studies. We are exceptionally proud of the breadth and depth of opportunities that we offer our students and we are able to attract some of the brightest minds in the world. Our DPhil students have the chance to work alongside established experts conducting authoritative research with an international audience.

Professor Roger Davies has been elected to the Academia Europaea in recognition of his groundbreaking studies of early-type galaxies.

Name: Dr Anastasia Ponomareva
Job title: Postdoctoral Research Assistant in Astrophysics

What are you currently working on?
I am currently studying the evolution of neutral hydrogen across cosmic times. Neutral hydrogen is probably the most important element in the Universe since it is a building block of all the structures we see in it. For this project I am using data from the most powerful radio telescope to date, MeerKAT, which is located in South Africa.

Dr Oliver Tattersall, a Post-Doctoral Research Assistant at the Department of Physics and former graduate student in the department has been named runner-up for the Royal Astronomical Society’s Michael Penston Thesis Prize.

Astrophysicist Dr Rebecca Smethurst from the University of Oxford’s Department of Physics has been awarded the Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship by the William Herschel Society with the Royal Astronomical Society. Becky is a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church.

‘I am absolutely thrilled to have been chosen to give the Caroline Herschel Prize Lecture,' she comments. 'Herschel was a giant of astronomy, and a trailblazer for women in science. It’s a privilege to have been chosen for an award in her honour.’

A four-year observing campaign with the UK’s Lovell Telescope of an extraordinary source of Fast Radio Bursts – short duration bursts of radio emission thought to originate in a distant galaxy – has revealed an as yet undiscovered feature of this source. These latest findings have been published in a paper out today, 8 June 2020.

The Department of Physics is delighted to welcome eight new Associate Professor Tutorial Fellows to its academic staff.

‘We are thrilled to be joined by such fantastic new colleagues,’ enthuses Professor Ian Shipsey, Head of Department. ‘Each one brings with them their rich experience, cutting-edge research and insightful teaching practice. As leading experts in their fields, the entire department is very excited for what the future holds. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the search committees for their excellent work in identifying such exceptional talent.’

Scientists around the world are racing to understand more about the COVID-19-causing virus – and physicists at Oxford are no exception. 'Without physics and physicists there could be no modern technological society, from microelectronics and telecommunications, to LCD displays and PET scanners in hospitals; it is therefore not surprising that physics has much to offer in the battle against CoV2,' explains Head of Department, Professor Ian Shipsey.

Name: Nora Eisner
Job title: Graduate student