CBE in King’s Birthday honours marks career spent in research and government service.
A physicist who is an expert in infectious diseases in animals is being recognised in the King’s birthday honours.
Rowland Kao, Professor of Veterinary Epidemiology and Data Science at the Roslin Institute within the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, and Personal Chair at the School of Physics and Astronomy, is being made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for his services to science and technology, specifically his work in mathematics and infectious disease dynamics.
Professor Kao completed undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in physics, and has a career in infectious disease research which spans three decades. He commented:
Physicists use mathematics but they also learn to respect the messiness of real world data – and that combination is ideal for helping us to understand the fundamental processes that drive how diseases spread and how to control them.
His focus is on understanding the movement and spread of infectious diseases among and between populations of wildlife, livestock and people. He has applied this to the understanding of key diseases including tuberculosis and Covid-19.
Professor Kao has worked at the Roslin Institute since 2017 and the School of Physics and Astronomy since 2022. He also serves as Chair of the UK Government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) Science Advisory Council (SAC), and took up this role in 2025 having served as a member of the SAC from 2018 to 2024.
Previously, Professor Kao has held appointments at the Universities of Glasgow and Oxford, and what was formerly the Institute for Animal Health, now the Pirbright Institute.
Professor Kao said:
I am honoured to be chosen for this award, and am especially pleased to see this recognition for animal science research. This underscores the importance of research in infectious animal diseases, and recognises its contribution to public health, through the wider efforts of many researchers and collaborators. I am continually thankful for the hard work, skills, and creativity that colleagues and collaborators bring to everything I do, and am indebted to them for making it a pleasure.
Why are the environments of Northeast Iceland captivating to astrobiologists? Discover the fascinating projects from a recent fieldtrip which shed light on these environments.
The extreme environments of Northeast Iceland emulate those seen on extra-terrestrial moons and planets, and therefore offer a unique look into exoplanet habitability.
A team of nine researchers from the School of Physics and Astronomy and School of Chemistry took part in a recent fieldtrip near Akureyri in North East Iceland. In this article they share details of their projects.
The researchers are part of the UK Centre for Astrobiology (UKCA), which seeks to explore the limits of life, the potential for life elsewhere in the universe, and the ability to detect biosignatures on otherwise barren worlds. This fieldtrip was designed to advance these goals and was generously funded in this endeavor by the David and Claudia Harding Foundation.
Research projects
The colour of exoplanets
The next generation of space telescopes will be designed to measure the “colour” of exoplanets – how much light they reflect at different wavelengths. Much of Iceland is composed of primitive minerals likely to occur on exoplanets, with minimal plant coverage. By exploring these areas, this project aims to marry ground-based sampling in these regions with satellite infrared “colour” measurements of Iceland, and so learn lessons for interpreting future telescope observations of exoplanets.
Clay communities
An investigation is taking place into the microbial communities that inhabit clays in cold Icelandic basalts. Understanding the capabilities of these organisms and their preservation potential in clays has applications to understanding the habitability of newly emerging volcanic environments on Earth and the biogeochemical processes that occur in weathered basaltic materials. This research will have application to volcanic terrains on Mars, including the preservation potential of life in Martian clays which are widely reported across the planet’s surface.
Biomorphs in basaltic terrains
Basaltic rocks are known to weather into products such as palagonite and smectite. Studies of the microbial communities inhabiting such products have showed the presence of non-biological features that were similar to the morphology of microorganisms. A range of life-like forms are also known to develop in mineral deposits formed around hot spring pools. Studies into the biological-like structures in basaltic and hydrothermal environments might offer insight into how life might arise elsewhere.
Plastics in Extreme Environments
Approximately 15% of marine litter ends up at coastlines, with plastics accounting for 60–95% of this debris. With nearly 5,000 km of coastline and a significant coastal population, Iceland is particularly susceptible to this coastal plastic pollution. Interestingly, the materials which make up much of this plastic debris, nylon and polyethylene (used in gillnets and buoys for example), are used in space exploration – nylon is used in space suits, and polyethylene for food packaging and radiation shielding for spacecraft.
Cryo-environments – Permafrost
Permafrost and cryosphere environments are at particular risk from climate change, warming at up to four times the global average. Current models assume that permafrost must first thaw before microbes can resume their metabolisms. However, it has been shown that some microbes can maintain an active liquid cytoplasm far below the freezing point of the external environment. Psychrophilic microorganisms from collected samples will be analysed to understand the biophysics that enable life in sub-zero environments.
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The Astronomy Royal for Scotland shares her life and work on The Life Scientific.
BBC Radio 4 is set to air an episode of The Life Scientific exploring the life and work of astrophysicist and Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Professor Catherine Heymans.
Hosted by theoretical physicist Professor Jim Al-Khalili, the programme will be broadcast on Radio 4 at 09:00 BST on Tuesday 3 June, and repeated at 21:00 BST on Wednesday 4 June.
Professor Heymans studied for an MPhys in Astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh, then completed her PhD at the University of Oxford. Her research career, which has included leading several international collaborations, seeks to shed light on the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter – elusive entities that together account for more than 95 per cent of the Universe.
In 2021, Professor Heymans was appointed Astronomer Royal for Scotland. Created in 1834, the position was originally held by the director of the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. Since 1995, however, it has been awarded as an honorary title. As the eleventh Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Professor Heymans focuses on sharing her passion for astronomy with people from all walks of life across Scotland.
Astronomers have made a startling discovery about a new type of cosmic phenomenon.
The discovery of an object, a long-period transient (LPT), known as ASKAP J1832-0911, has been seen to emit pulses of radio waves and X-rays for two minutes every 44 minutes.
LPTs are a relatively new class of astrophysical objects that are known to emit radio waves in a periodic fashion – unusually slowly compared to most periodic radio objects. However, this is the first time such objects have been detected in X-rays.
Currently, there is no clear explanation for what causes the signals, or why they ‘switch on’ and ‘switch off’ at such long, regular and unusual intervals.
Astronomers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), in collaboration with international teams, made the discovery. They hope that this latest discovery may provide insights into the sources of similar mysterious signals observed across the sky.
The team discovered ASKAP J1832-0911 by using the ASKAP radio telescope on Wajarri Country in Australia, owned and operated by Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO. They correlated the radio signals with X-ray pulses detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was coincidentally observing the same part of the sky.
Dr Marcin Glowacki from the School’s Institute for Astronomy was involved in the collaboration. Using observations of ASKAP J1832-0911 and the surrounding Milky Way galaxy taken from South Africa’s MeerKAT radio telescope, he looked for hydrogen gas located between the LPT and Earth. When the LPT is ‘on’ it is so bright that observations found the Milky Way gas blocking out some of that radio light. By detecting this gas within the LPT signal, he was able to place a lower limit on how far away this unusual object is, which was important to rule out association with other objects in that part of the sky.
Explanations for the LPT include the possibility of the object being a magnetar (the core of a dead star with powerful magnetic fields), or a pair of stars in a binary system where one of the two is a highly magnetised white dwarf (a low-mass star at the end of its evolution).
However, even those theories do not fully explain what is being observed. This discovery could indicate a new type of physics or new models of stellar evolution.
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Come along to our Open Days to find out more about studying at the University of Edinburgh and the School of Physics & Astronomy.
Our Open Days will take place on Friday 20th June, Saturday 4th October and Saturday 25th October 2025.
At the School of Physics & Astronomy you will get the chance to find out more about our Undergraduate degree programmes, meet academics and students, and tour our physics labs.
Please check the University of Edinburgh Open Day pages to find out more and book your place.
Congratulations to Dr Gediminas Sarpis, who has received recognition for his outreach in high energy particle physics.
Dr Gediminas Sarpis has been awarded the Institute of Physics (IOP) High Energy Particle Physics Science in Society Prize for his exceptional contributions to public engagement and outreach.
The IOP recognised Dr Sarpis for his “pioneering work in communicating high energy particle science via multidisciplinary collaborations, and to disadvantaged and overlooked communities”.
Dr Sarpis commented:
I’m grateful to the IOP for recognising the value of this work, and also to the University of Edinburgh for supporting my outreach and public engagement.
Dr William Barter, a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow in the School of Physics and Astronomy who works closely with Dr Sarpis, added:
This award is testament to the incredible effort and work that Gediminas has shown in sharing our scientific research. He has worked with many different communities – including residents of Edinburgh and prisoners across Europe.
Notable previous recipients of the award include Professor Brian Cox and the University of Edinburgh’s Dr Alan Walker.
The UK Centre for Astrobiology (UKCA) at the University of Edinburgh has officially launched the UKCA Harding Essay Competition 2025, inviting undergraduate and postgraduate students across the UK to take part.
This annual competition offers a unique platform for students to explore topics that connect science, culture, and philosophy. Participants are encouraged to share their insights and original ideas, with the opportunity to have their work published on the UKCA website and win exciting prizes.
The competition is open to students from all disciplines — whether aspiring journalists, scientists, or creative writers. "This is a chance for students to make their voices heard and engage with some of the biggest questions about life, the universe, and our place within it," the organisers said.
Entries must be submitted by 31 July 2025 via email to UKCA-info [at] ed.ac.uk. Full details, including competition guidelines are available on the UKCA webpage.
Extreme conditions create stable compounds, offering planetary insights.
Carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen are crucial elements in the solar system. They are essential for the origins of life. The simplest molecules from these elements are methane (CH₄) and nitrogen (N₂). These typically do not react under normal conditions, but on Saturn’s moon Titan, interactions suggest otherwise. To understand how these reactions might happen deep within planets, researchers examined these molecules under extreme pressures and temperatures.
During the research, mixtures of methane and nitrogen were squeezed using a tool called a diamond anvil cell, to simulate high pressure environments, with fascinating results.
At pressures above 7 GPa (~70,000 atm) two new compounds (CH₄)₇(N₂)₈ and (CH₄)₅N2 formed. Remarkably, when pressure exceeded 160 GPa, the methane and nitrogen molecules broke apart, forming a new material with carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen atoms bonded tightly together. Surprisingly, this new material remained stable even after the pressure was removed.
The research team also discovered that heating methane-nitrogen mixtures to over 1400°C at 40 GPa caused it to break down into powdered diamond and ammonia.
The findings can be found in a paper published in Angewandte Chemie by PhD student Hannah Shuttleworth. The project was led by colleagues from the School’s Institute for Condensed Matter and Complex Systems (ICMCS): Dr Ross Howie, Dr Miriam Peña-Alvarez and Professor Andreas Hermann.
These discoveries provide new insights into chemical processes potentially occurring in planetary interiors, contributing significantly to our understanding of planetary chemistry.
Dr Ross Howie, ERC Research Fellow said:
This research highlights how pressure alone can be used to induce reactions in seemingly stable systems, which is crucial in mimicking the conditions found within the interiors of planets.
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The European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope will be turned off after eleven years of observing from deep space. A team at the Institute for Astronomy, who have worked with the spacecraft during the entire operational phase, reflect on this milestone, the successes of the mission so far and the work still to be done.
Eleven years in deep space
The European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft was launched on 19 December 2013 and has been operating almost continuously for the last eleven years, scanning the sky with its twin telescopes as part of its mission to build a detailed map of the Milky Way. It resides in deep space at the second Lagrange point in the Sun-Earth system (‘L2’), a gravitationally neutral point that is a favourable location for making observations, and which hosts numerous space telescopes. The space environment is harsh, and Gaia has been subject to continuous radiation exposure, solar flares, and micro-meteorite impacts during its lifetime. However, it was built to be resilient, and it has remained operating almost without fault for the entire eleven years – more than twice as long as originally planned. Continual near-realtime monitoring of the health of the onboard instruments has been carried out by a team at the Institute for Astronomy as part of their contributions to the mission data processing.
‘Passivation’
Gaia has now run out of the cold gas propellant that is used to maintain its orientation, and the final science observations were collected in mid January. Since then the spacecraft has been undergoing a series of end-of-life tests to better understand the behaviour of its instruments and the status of numerous components after more then a decade in space. In late March it will be finally turned off, a process referred to as ‘passivation’. This involves first moving it away from L2 and putting it into a heliocentric orbit that keeps it safely away from operational satellites. On the 27 of March the final passivation steps will be carried out – the remaining propellant will be dumped, all electronic components turned off and the onboard software that controls the spacecraft will be deleted.
Work still to do
Although the spacecraft itself will be retired, the on-ground work of processing the raw data, production of the star catalogues and preparation for their release to the scientific community will continue for several years to come. Gaia observations are used to measure the distances to stars by triangulation, and although interim star catalogues have been published over the last few years based on partial datasets, the nature of the calculation means that the final, best accuracy cannot be reached until all the data is available. At the Wide Field Astronomy Unit, part of the Institute for Astronomy, a team works on the detailed characterisation of the scientific instruments, development of the calibration models and the creation of the data processing software. These are crucial inputs for the conversion of the raw data to science-ready catalogues of stars. With each successive publication of data from the mission the entire Milky Way map is redrawn, benefiting from improvements to the instrument models, data processing systems and increased number of data points. Now that the raw science dataset is complete, the production of the final star catalogue can begin. This will be released by the end of 2030.
Dr Nick Rowell, Senior Sky Survey Researcher at the School's Institute for Astronomy said:
The Gaia mission continues to deliver unprecedented insights into the history of our galaxy the Milky Way, as well as many other branches of astronomy. The Gaia space telescope has survived more than eleven years in the harsh environment of space where it has been battered by solar flares, cosmic radiation and regular meteor strikes. It has now run out of propellant and reached the end of its lifetime, so must be put into a disposal orbit where it won't pose a risk to operational satellites. The telescope has delivered huge volumes of data that we will be working hard to prepare and release over the next few years. As yet, only around a quarter of the observations have been included in the data released to the scientific community, and there is a lot of work still to do.
Dr Nigel Hambly Senior Researcher at the School's Institute for Astronomy said:
Gaia has proved to be remarkably resilient - a testament to all the engineers and scientists involved. It is a privilege for our team at the Institute for Astronomy to continue to play a significant role in the mission as we move into the post-operational phase. Preparation of the final data release products for the full 10 year mission will keep us occupied for several years to come and we look forward to further exciting discoveries as the world astronomical community continues to exploit the Gaia data releases.
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Congratulations to Professor Richard Ball who has been elected as RSE Fellow.
Professor Richard Ball
Congratulations to Professor Richard Ball who is among the distinguished individuals elected to become Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE).
Professor Ball works in the area of particle physics theory, the study of elementary particles and their interactions as revealed by experiments at particle colliders such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. He has a broad range of interests, from chirality and the Higgs boson, to high energy quantum chromodynamics, and the extraction of precision physics from hadronic collisions using neural networks and machine learning.
Royal Society of Edinburgh
The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s National Academy, is an educational charity established in 1783.
New Fellows are elected to the RSE each year through a nomination process and the Fellowship comprises around 1,800 leading experts. The RSE uses its combined knowledge of Fellows to tackle the most pressing issues facing society, provide independent expert advice to policymakers and inspire the next generation of innovative thinkers.