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.

Congratulations to Prof Stephen Blundell who is a recipient of the Most Acclaimed Lecturer Award (MPLS) at the OUSU Teaching Awards ceremony held on 11 May 2017.

Information on other awards winners can be viewed here

Condensed matter physics is the study of the multitude of ways in which matter can organise itself. Conventional phases, such as a ferromagnet, metal or superconductor, can be characterised by looking at the system locally in space. However, topological phases of matter require a different approach and in a recent Nature Physics paper we show the importance of topology for the excitations in a quantum magnet.

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.

Congratulations to Luke Ceurvorst who recently won the best poster prize at the 44th IoP Plasma Physics Conference on channelling results from OMEGA EP.

Many congratulations to Subir Sarkar who has been awarded the IUPAP-TIFR Homi Bhabha Medal and Prize 2017.

This prize is awarded for distinguished contributions in high energy cosmic ray physics and astro-particle physics.

You can read more here

For an idea in physics to have real-world impact, you need an unbroken chain stretching from physics, through materials discovery and development, and right along to industry. Joining up these disparate areas in the field of superconductor research is the aim of a new Centre for Applied Superconductivity (CfAS), a collaborative effort between local industrial companies and Oxford University’s Departments of Materials and Physics.

Prof Howard Milchberg, University of Maryland
10 Mar: ‘Spatio-temporal Optical Vortices’
3.30pm in the Martin Wood Lecture Theatre

A new way to experimentally determine the topological winding number of a system has been discovered