Summer 2012
Our latest Department newsletter is now available to download in PDF format here. Have a look at the wide range of work that we do in front-line research, teaching, public outreach and school education. We would welcome contributions to future newsletters from undergraduate or postgraduate alumni and previous members of the physics department.
In the first week of July members of the Biological Physics group, with colleagues from the Centre for Mechanochemical Cell Biology at the University of Warwick, presented their research at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition. The “Mini Motors” stand brought together their interests in biological nano-scale transport and spanned naturally occurring motors, such as kinesin and the bacterial flagellar motor, to building synthetic motors from DNA.
Congratulations to Yulin Chen (Condensed Matter) who has been awarded the prestigious Outstanding Young Researcher Award of the International Organization of Chinese Physicists and Astronomers, with the following citation:
STFC have announce the 2012 round of Ernest Rutherford Fellowships. These are prestigious 5 year fellowships which may be held in any of the science areas supported by STFC. See oxford physics opportunities for further details about applying to hold one of these fellowships here.
Congratulations to Yulin Chen (Condensed Matter Physics), who was awarded the prestigious OYRA award with the following citation:
"For his pioneering contribution in advancing our knowledge of topological insulators using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, for the realization of the topological insulating state of Bi2Te3, and the discovery of the massive topological surface state in magnetically doped topological Bi2Se3."
University of Oxford physicists working both at CERN and in Oxford are today celebrating their part in the discovery of a new particle. An excess of collision events has been observed by both the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN. The signals are consistent with those expected from the long-anticipated Higgs boson. Each experiment has separately observed a "5-sigma" excess, meeting the gold standard of confidence in discovery of a new particle.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell has been elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics.
Katherine Blundell has been awarded the Bragg Medal "For promoting engagement in and learning of physics both by carrying research in astronomy into schools in developing countries and by helping graduate students and postdocs in the UK to talk to schoolchildren about their science."
On Monday 2nd July, the Lindemann Theatre in the Clarendon Laboratory hosted the 'Horizon' BBC film crew, where Robert Taylor (Professor of Condensed Matter) and Marcus du Sautoy (Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Professor of Mathematics) filmed an episode that was all about temperature scales and the role of Lord Kelvin. They included demonstrations of the transition from normal to superfluid helium and the triple point of nitrogen.
Prof Graham Ross FRS has been awarded the 2012 Dirac Medal of the UK Institute of Physics for his theoretical work in developing both the Standard Model of fundamental particles and forces and theories beyond the Standard Model that have led to many new insights into the origins and nature of the universe.
Oxford University Computing Services' OxTALENT program has awarded First Prize in the Student IT Innovation category to Mihran Vardanyan for his development of the iCosmos cosmology calculator.
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