Supporting researchers in future independent roles

Congratulations to Somrita Ray, the School’s inaugural Elizabeth Gardner Fellow, who has been appointed in a permanent position.

Congratulations to Somrita Ray, who has recently been appointed as Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Berhampur.

As the School of Physics and Astronomy's inaugural Elizabeth Gardner Fellow, Somrita had been working on the statistical physics of resetting processes. The Elizabeth Gardner Fellowship supports early-career, postdoctoral researchers in physics and astronomy to prepare themselves for future independent roles in academia and beyond. The Fellowship is aimed at candidates from backgrounds which are under-represented in the School’s academic community.

Somrita commented on her delight in her new appointment:

The IISER position will give me the ideal balance of teaching and research with students who are motivated to study Basic Sciences. The Elizabeth Gardner Fellowship has given me a platform to obtain this position. It allowed me the required time to chase my dream of securing a permanent academic position while providing me with the essential resources to continue my research in the highly intellectual environment of the University of Edinburgh.

The Elizabeth Gardner Fellowship honours the outstanding achievements of Elizabeth Gardner (1957 - 1988) who studied Mathematical Physics at the University of Edinburgh and worked as a Research Fellow in the School of Physics and Astronomy. Her works on the optimal storage of neural networks have been selected as two of the most influential papers in the 50th anniversary of Journal of Physics A.