Fellowship success for under-represented research student

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.