Congratulations to Prof Fabian Essler, who has been awarded a 2015 MPLS Individual Divisional Teaching Award.

The MPLS Divisional Teaching Award Scheme celebrates success, and recognises and rewards excellence in teaching. Awards are available to all those who teach, including graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and learning support staff. The Teaching Award Scheme is administered by the MPLS Divisional Office and awards are made, on merit, across the departments by a cross-departmental panel chaired by the Associate Head of Division (Academic).

On 26th February at the 7th annual student conference of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), Arnold Mathijssen won the £100 prize for the best presentation while Rachel Bennett won the prize for the best poster.

From the academic year 2015/16, Oxford Physics and Oxford Mathematics will jointly offer a new masters level course in mathematical and theoretical physics. Students from outside Oxford can apply to join the MSc mode of the course and will study for an MSc in Mathematical and Theoretical Physics. Oxford MPhys, MMath or MPhysPhil students will be able to apply for transfer to the MMathPhys mode of the course after their third year and study mathematical and theoretical physics in their fourth year, instead of following the fourth year of their original degree course.

The Higgs boson is just the start. With the collision energy of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) about to increase from 8 to 13 TeV, the search for other, as-yet-unobserved particles will soon be on.

This week, 140 physicists from around the world are meeting in St Catherine's College, Oxford, to plan their new-particle search strategies with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC.

The Holweck Medal for 2014 has been awarded to Professor Ramin Golestanian "for his pioneering contributions to the field of active soft matter, particularly microscopic swimmers and active colloids." The gold medal and a prize of Eu3000 is awarded by the Société Française de Physique, and was presented to Professor Golestanian at a ceremony in Paris on August 27.

Congratulations to Prof Steve Simon, who has been awarded a 2014 MPLS Divisional Teaching Award.