The School of Physics and Astronomy is delighted to welcome Professor Philip Best to the position of Head of School
Professor Best was previously the Head of the Institute for Astronomy within the School of Physics and Astronomy, a post which he undertook for 4 years.
Professor Best plans to continue building on the successes made within the School during the past few years. Additional priorities include strengthening research impact collaborations, supporting the development of teaching and student support initiatives, fostering a diverse and inclusive environment, and enhancing community engagement.
Professor Best takes over from Professor Dunlop who will devote his Royal Society Research Professorship to work in the area of galaxy formation and evolution.
Congratulations to Dr Stewart Gault who has received a Royal Society of Edinburgh grant to support his research in understanding how bacteria survives at low temperatures.
The Small Research Grant from the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) covers the costs arising from a defined research project and encourages high-quality research and academic innovation.
The limits of life
One of the major goals in astrobiology is discerning the limits to life and how life has adapted to extreme environments, thereby informing us as to whether extreme environments found beyond Earth are potentially capable of supporting life.
Understanding the habitability of subzero temperature environments is particularly important as the icy moons Europa and Enceladus contain vast quantities of liquid water. However, we do not know what the low temperature limit for life is, or whether it is set by one factor or a combination of factors.
Record holder
The current record holder for low temperature growth and metabolism is Planococcus halocryophilus (P. halocryophilus), which can replicate at -15°C, while maintaining metabolic activity down to -25°C. The mechanisms which facilitate this low temperature activity are currently unknown.
Research project
This RSE Grant will enable Dr Gault to investigate whether it is the onset of intracellular vitrification that enforces a limit for P. halocryophilus’ low temperature activity and whether P. halocryophilus has adaptations which can modulate its intracellular vitrification.
In addition, he will be exploring whether the presence of extracellular ions found in the natural environment and the growth medium confer any depression of P. halocryophilus’ intracellular vitrification, thereby permitting low temperature metabolic activity without the need for specific vitrification oriented adaptions.
Congratulations to Dr Beckmann who has received a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Future Leaders Fellowship (FLF).
Supermassive black holes
Dr Beckmann’s research focuses on supermassive black holes, which are some of the most extreme objects in the Universe. Today, every massive galaxy has a supermassive black hole in its centre. With each black hole weighing more than a small galaxy, such massive objects cannot form directly. Instead, today's supermassive black holes started out as small black holes when the Universe was young, over 12 billion years ago.
Her fellowship success will enable her to use powerful simulations to tackle the difficult challenge of how black holes in the early Universe move in and around galaxies. Dr Beckmann’s work will unveil when and how they first find their way into the galaxies where we can see them today, and quantify what impact they had on the early Universe. As part of this work she will take advantage of the recent wealth of insight from the James Webb Space telescope, and prepare for upcoming flagship missions such as the gravitational wave observatory LISA and the X-ray observatory NewATHENA.
Dr Beckmann originally joined the School of Physics and Astronomy in 2024 as an Elizabeth Gardner fellow.
UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship
The UKRI FLF scheme supports universities, businesses, and other research and innovation environments to develop their most talented people into a next wave of world-class leaders.
The scheme provides long-term support in order to enable fellows to tackle ambitious programmes, multidisciplinary questions, and new or emerging research and innovation areas and partnerships.
In this latest round, 68 fellows will be funded a total of £104 million to lead research into global issues and commercialise their innovations in the UK.
Astronomers have created the most detailed weather report so far for two distant worlds beyond our own solar system.
The international study – the first of its kind – reveals the extreme atmospheric conditions on the celestial objects, which are swathed in swirling clouds of hot sand amid temperatures of 950C.
Using NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), researchers set out to capture the weather on a pair of brown dwarfs – cosmic bodies that are bigger than planets but smaller than stars. These brown dwarfs, named collectively as WISE 1049AB, are the brightest and closest objects of their type to Earth, around six light years away.
The team tracked each brown dwarf’s atmosphere by measuring the light waves emitted from their surfaces, which change as more or less cloudy regions revolve in and out of view. By visualising this data through light curves – a plot of how the brightness of light from each object changes over time – the team was able to build up a detailed 3D picture of how the brown dwarfs’ weather changed over the course of a full rotation or day, between five and seven hours. The team was also able to plot how the light from each object varied by wavelength, to demonstrate the presence and complex interplay of gases such as water, methane, and carbon monoxide in their atmospheres. The insights may help astronomers develop the understanding of brown dwarfs as a potential missing link between stars and planets – promising new insights into both.
By observing the infrared part of the light spectrum, the JWST is able to observe wavelengths of light that are blocked by our own atmosphere. This capability opens frontiers in the study of the early universe, star formation, and so-called exoplanets such as brown dwarfs which lie beyond our solar system.
The latest study builds on previous studies of brown dwarfs, which have mainly been confined to capturing static snapshots of their atmosphere on only one side. This approach is limited, as brown dwarfs are known to rotate relatively quickly and their weather can vary greatly over time, researchers say.
Their findings will pave the way for more detailed studies into brown dwarfs and other distant celestial objects.
The study, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, was led by the University of Edinburgh in collaboration with researchers from Trinity College Dublin, the University of Virginia, and other institutes from around the world.
Professor Beth Biller said
Our findings show that we are on the cusp of transforming our understanding of worlds far beyond our own. Insights such as these can help us understand the conditions not just on celestial objects like brown dwarfs, but also on giant exoplanets beyond our solar system. Eventually, the techniques we are refining here may enable the first detections of weather on habitable planets like our own, which orbit other stars.
Image gallery
Congratulations to Dr Barter who has been elected as LHCb-UK Physics Coordinator.
Dr William Barter has been elected as LHCb-UK Physics Coordinator for the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment.
The LHCb experiment is one of four large experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, investigating the physics of particles that contain either beauty quarks or charm quarks, searching for signs of new fundamental particles and forces of nature. The experiment has been running successfully for over a decade and has now entered a new era following a recent upgrade. This upgrade will collect significantly larger datasets, unlocking the potential for exciting new discoveries in the coming years.
The UK physics coordinator is responsible for coordinating the studies of over 200 scientists at the 11 UK institutes within the international collaboration that operates the LHCb detector. The holder of the role is chosen by these UK institutes in a nationally competitive election process. Following his election, Dr Barter will carry out this role for the next two years, leading the UK community within LHCb in an exciting and crucial period.
Congratulations to Dr Erin Goldstraw who has been awarded a Daphne Jackson fellowship.
Dr Erin Goldstraw will take up her appointment with the School of Mathematics with joint supervision from the School of Physics and Astronomy.
She completed her MSc in Mathematical Physics at the School of Physics and Astronomy in 2014/15, graduating with Distinction and receiving a class medal.
Dr Erin Goldstraw’s research project aims to combine current knowledge between plasma turbulence, solar physics and fusion research in a way that is understandable and useful for all of these fields.
Daphne Jackson Fellowships enable talented scientists and researchers to retrain and return to research after a break of two or more years.
The Daphne Jackson Trust was established in 1992 in memory of Professor Daphne Jackson – the UK’s first female Professor of Physics. Daphne devised a Fellowship scheme in the mid-1980s to support talented individuals wanting to return to research after a career break.
Professor Murray Campbell’s community service has been recognised with the award of the British Empire Medal.
Professor Donald Murray Campbell, Professor of Musical Acoustics, has been awarded the British Empire Medal for services to the Carlops Church and to the local community in Tweeddale and Edinburgh.
Professor Campbell has for several decades served Carlops Church in the voluntary roles of Session Clerk and organist. He is also a member of the Worship Leaders Team in the linked charge of West Tweeddale, and is currently Convener of the Lothian and Borders Presbytery Council. He and his wife Patsy are well known for their demonstration lectures to schools and community groups on the science and history of musical instruments.
The King’s Birthday Honours are announced each year to mark extraordinary contributions and achievements of people across the United Kingdom, including exceptional service to the UK overseas or internationally.
Congratulations to Gracie McGill who has been awarded a Bell Burnell Graduate Scholarship Fund.
The awardees of the 2024 Bell Burnell Graduate Scholarship Fund have been announced.
The fund aims to improve diversity in physics by offering scholarships to PhD students from groups currently under-represented in the physics research community.
Award recipient Gracie McGill will be joining the School of Physics and Astronomy in September and undertaking a PhD into how galaxies form and evolve. She will be working with observations from the new Euclid telescope to map stars in the outer regions of galaxies, known as stellar halos, in order to build up an archaeological record. Gracie has just completed an MPhys in Astrophysics at the School of Physics and Astronomy in Edinburgh.
The fund is made possible thanks to Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s donation of her £2.3m Breakthrough Prize. The fund is run by the Institute of Physics.
The under-represented groups listed in the eligibility criteria include women, students of Black-Caribbean, Black-African and other minority ethnic (BAME) heritage, students with disabilities, or who require additional funding to support inclusive learning, LGBT+ students and students from disadvantaged backgrounds who may struggle to find the levels of funding needed to complete their studies. People with qualifying refugee status who meet the above criteria are also eligible to apply.
Scholarship applications usually open in October with a closing date in January.
Congratulations to Chancellor’s Fellows Drs Gurtej Kanwar, Sarah Rugheimer and Catriona Wimberley.
Chancellor’s Fellows
The University of Edinburgh is committed to supporting talented early career researchers through the recruitment of Chancellor’s Fellows: a prestigious 5-year tenure track fellowship scheme focused on innovative research.
The Fellows recruited in this round will complement and extend research and innovation within the University and forge new areas of focus which may involve leading a major area of research, forging new industry partnerships, or driving initiatives to strengthen research-led teaching innovations.
The scheme builds in a focus on research and innovation in the first few years, and over time, Fellows will take up the full range of core academic activities, including teaching and academic leadership.
Dr Gurtej Kanwar
Dr Kanwar’s research focuses on the development of generative Artificial Intelligence methods and the advancement of fundamental physics with these tools. He is particularly interested in generative models capable of precisely sampling fluctuations of the quantum fields believed to describe all matter in our universe. These methods can overcome roadblocks in numerically challenging calculations necessary to better understand particle physics and to discover new physics. He will join the School in autumn 2024.
Dr Sarah Rugheimer
Dr Rugheimer is an astrophysicist working on the habitability of Earth-like exoplanets. In her research she models the climate and photochemistry of early Earth and Earth-like planets to better understand habitability and how we could detect and characterise habitable worlds with future telescopes like the Habitable Worlds Observatory and LIFE – the Large Interferometer for Exoplanets. She will join the School in 2025.
Dr Catriona Wimberley
Dr Wimberley works in medical imaging physics and her fellowship will focus on the development of novel methods for the quantification of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging data, a functional, molecular imaging modality used in the study of diseases such as cancer and dementia. She will harness the most recent technological break throughs such as multi-modal imaging (PET and magnetic resonance) and Total Body PET and develop methods to extract more disease-relevant information from medical imaging data.
Congratulations to Susanna Richmond who has been awarded the University of Edinburgh’s Impact Enabler prize.
The Impact Enabler prize is awarded to a colleague who has demonstrated outstanding commitment to the development of impact culture and the delivery of tangible benefits from research and partnerships to communities and research users.
Ms Richmond works as the School’s Impact Research Officer, providing valuable support to colleagues and collaborators who are using research to tackle industrial and societal challenges.
The award was presented at the University’s inaugural Impact Festival. This event took place to celebrate the engagement and impact of the University’s research endeavours, and involved colleagues from PhD students to researchers, and technical and professional services staff.
In addition to Ms Richmond’s award, the School’s Particle Physics Experiment Group was shortlisted in the Team Culture category.