Menu

    Congratulations to colleagues who have received fellowships and awards in this latest round.

    The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) has announced its funding outcome with focus on creating and strengthening collaborations. 

    Early Career Fellowships  

    Congratulations to the following who have received RSE Saltire Early Career Fellowships:  

    • Dr Benjamin Giblin, postdoctoral researcher in cosmology, will receive funding for his project on ‘Shining Light in the Dark: Enhancing Insights into the Dark Universe with Gravitational Lensing and Machine Learning’, collaborating with researchers at the Universitat de Barcelona. 
    • Dr Nathan Moynihan, postdoctoral researcher based in the School’s Particle Physics Theory group will work with colleagues in the University of Dublin on ‘Scattering Amplitudes, Gravity and the Celestial Sphere’. 
    • Ms Frederika Phipps, PhD student, is collaborating with the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias on ‘Globular Clusters in Cosmological Simulations: Evolution Beyond Formation’. 

    The RSE saltire early career Fellowships provide PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and Early Career Researchers with a 3–12 month opportunity to focus on a research project of their choice in a university or research institute in another country. The fellowship supports career development and high-quality research production through European connections and collaboration via research placements. 

    Project collaboration awards

    Prof Richard Blythe’s work on ‘Statistical mechanical theories of emergence in biological systems’ has received a RSE Saltire Facilitation Network Award. This is in partnership with colleagues from the Statistical Physics and Complexity Group at Edinburgh, the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization. The award is designed to create and consolidate a collaborative Scotland – EU partnership over a two-year period.  

    Dr Sean McMahon has been awarded an RSE Saltire International Collaboration Award.  This award aims to facilitate international collaboration between researchers based in Scotland with researchers in the EU for up to two years, in this case, colleagues in the University of Uppsala. Their collaboration will focus on improving our understanding of how to recognise the earliest evidence of life in our solar system. 

    Royal Society of Edinburgh  

    The RSE is an educational charity providing public benefit throughout Scotland. This round of grants totals £1,805,000, funded by the Scottish Government, through the RSE Saltire Research Awards. Grants covers a total of 93 research projects across Scotland. 

    Prof Aliotta receives the Giuseppe Occhialini Medal and Prize in recognition of her work in nuclear astrophysics.

    Giuseppe Occhialini Medal and Prize 

    The Giuseppe Occhialini Medal and Prize is awarded jointly by the Institute of Physics and the Italian Physical Society for distinguished work by a physicist based in Italy or the UK/Ireland. 

    Prof Marialuisa Aliotta received this award for her major contributions to nuclear astrophysics experiments, in particular to the study of key hydrogen-burning reactions relevant to quiescent stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis, in the framework of the international LUNA experiments at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare). 

    Investigating the nuclear reactions in stars 

    Her research interests focus on experimental nuclear astrophysics, specifically on the investigation of nuclear reactions that occur in stars and govern their lifetime and evolution. These reactions are also responsible for the creation of new chemical elements both in quiescent stars like our sun and in explosive scenarios like novae, supernovae, and X-ray bursts. 

    Quiescent stellar evolution involves reactions mainly between stable nuclei at energies well below the Coulomb barrier of the interacting species. Their experimental investigation in a terrestrial laboratory is severely hampered by the background induced by the cosmic rays in the detection devices. Thus, a unique approach consists in carrying out measurements underground, where the background induced by cosmic rays is suppressed by orders of magnitude. Over the last ten years, Marialuisa’s research has been conducted at the world leading Laboratory for Underground Nuclear Astrophysics (LUNA) at the INFN Laboratory Nazionali del Gran Sasso (Italy). Prior to joining the LUNA Collaboration in 2010, Prof. Aliotta proposed and performed experiments at Radioactive Ion Beam facilities (TRIUMF, GANIL, CERN) mainly to study (α,p) reactions on unstable nuclei, many of which are crucial to drive explosive scenarios such as X-ray bursts. These measurements are also difficult to perform because of limitations in radioactive ion beam species and intensities. New opportunities are now opening up with the use of storage rings such as CRYRING at GSI (Germany). 

    Prof Aliotta commented: 

    I’m delighted to have received the Giuseppe Occhialini Medal and Prize for 2021. As it is often the case, awards to individuals are never entirely their own. So, aside from my personal recognition, the prize is also a recognition of the outstanding work of the entire LUNA Collaboration. My heartfelt gratitude goes to all my colleagues at LUNA and in particular to Dr Carlo Bruno and Prof Thomas Davinson for their extraordinary contributions over the years.

    Congratulations to Dr Dominique Laniel who has been awarded a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Future Leaders Fellowship, and will be joining the School of Physics and Astronomy and the Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions (CSEC).

    Fellowship scheme 

    The UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships have been instigated to ensure the strong supply of talented individuals needed for a vibrant environment for research and innovation in the UK.   

    In this round, a total of 13 pioneering researchers, tech entrepreneurs, business leaders and innovators across different sectors and disciplines in Scotland will benefit from a £16.5 million cash boost to convert their innovative ideas to transformational products and services. 

    Nitrogen-based technological materials 

    Dr. Dominique Laniel's research aims to synthesise next-generation high energy density and superhard nitrogen-based technological materials employing extreme pressure and temperature conditions—up to 1,500,000 times the atmospheric pressure and 5000 K. His research will also expand our fundamental understanding of matter at extreme conditions, essential for modelling planetary bodies and providing benchmarks for theoretical calculations.  

    Dominique obtained his Master's degree in Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada, followed by a PhD in Solid State Physics and Chemistry from the Sorbonnes University, France. He then pursued his research as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, and later through a Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft grant, at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, in the Laboratory of Crystallography - Materials Physics and Technology at Extreme Conditions.  

    UK project processing massive data stream from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile will take inventory of the Universe.

    How it will work

    The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile will carry out the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) by constantly surveying the southern sky over a period of 10 years. The Observatory consists of an 8-metre telescope, the largest digital camera ever constructed with 189 sensors totalling 3.2 gigapixels, a complex data processing system, and an online education platform.

    The survey will produce an image every minute, and every object that is variable, transient or moving will be catalogued and a constant data stream of these alerts will be produced.

    It will impact every area in astronomy and will revolutionise the capability of astronomers to scan the sky for distant cosmic explosions, hungry black holes, the nearest earth-hazardous asteroids and the search for distant bodies and dwarf planets in the outer solar system.

    The role of the UK

    This work is part of UK’s Lasair project which has been selected as an official LSST community alert broker and will receive the full Rubin alert stream. The University of Edinburgh and Queen’s University Belfast have been partnering, with funding from STFC (Science and Technology Facilities Council), to build a community broker that will provide a user friendly and scientifically powerful platform for world-wide users to exploit this information-rich data stream. 

    They built Lasair (which is Gaelic for "flame" or "flash"), the working prototype, which demonstrates how scientists across the world can scientifically exploit this massive data stream. The Rubin Observatory can support only a fixed number of full data streams, given their size and daily rate, and issued a call for proposals from the world-wide community.

    Prof Stephen Smartt from the Queen's University Belfast said:

    "Our selection as a community broker is endorsement of the work we have been doing over the last 3 - 5 years, showing that the UK has the technical and computing expertise to allow the world to exploit the LSST data. Rubin will be an enormous leap forward in scientific capability - the sensitivity, precision of measurement, and spectral information is unprecedented. But science will come from being able to understand and extract information from this stream."

    Dr Roy Williams from the School of Physics and Astronomy’s Institute for Astronomy, and one of the lead developers and architects of Lasair said:

    "There is now a deluge of data as sensors of all kinds proliferate. Electric grids deliver logging information at dizzying rates and bridges have internet-connected stress monitors, everywhere in modern society more messages are being produced. The difficulty is discerning what is critical and urgent from the irrelevant and ordinary. We are taking the lead in building a system so UK astronomers can get precisely what they are looking for."

    What’s next?

    The UK team have demonstrated a successful prototype, running on a data stream from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). The ZTF is a much smaller telescope based in California that produces a stream of astronomical alerts in similar format to that which will come from LSST.

    The LSST data stream will be a factor 30 larger than that from ZTF and the Lasair team are now developing their technology to cope with the richer data flow. Lasair matches the alerts against every astronomical object that has ever been catalogued in the sky, in a giant database, and classifies the alerts based on the what we know about that region of sky across the full electromagnetic spectrum.

    The team are developing novel database and data streaming techniques over the next two years to be ready for science data from Rubin in early 2024. The full telescope commissioning in Chile is planned to begin in 2023 and the Lasair team are working to be ready to accept the data tsunami that will run for 10 years.

    Congratulations to astronomer Dr Cyrielle Opitom who has been awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship.

    The Royal Society has announced 37 successful University Research Fellowship candidates for 2021. The scheme supports scientists who are in the early stages of their research path to build their career and pursue cutting-edge scientific research.

    Dr Opitom is based in the School’s Institute for Astronomy. Her research focuses on looking at the composition of comets to learn about the early solar system and how it was formed. Comets are some of the most pristine relics of planetary formation, and their nuclei preserve invaluable clues about the conditions at the time of their formation. She will compare the composition of solar system comets to interstellar objects formed in very different environments. She will combine new observations of comets at large distances, re-analyse existing data and use multi-wavelength and multi-technique observations.

    Dr Cyrielle Opitom Cyrielle obtained her PhD in Astronomy at the Université de Liège in Belgium in 2016 and then moved to Chile as a fellow at the European Southern Observatory (ESO). She has worked at the University of Edinburgh since 2019.

    The XENON/DARWIN and LUX-ZEPLIN collaborations have now joined forces to work together on the construction of a new xenon observatory to explore dark matter.

    Dark matter makes up 85% of the matter in the Universe, but its nature remains a mystery. The direct identification of the dark matter particle is amongst the highest priorities in science and also one of the most challenging.

    The XENON/DARWIN and LUX-ZEPLIN collaborations have now joined forces to work together on the design, construction, and operation of a new, single, multi-tonne scale xenon observatory to explore dark matter. The detector will be highly sensitive to a wide range of proposed dark matter particles and their interactions with visible matter.

    The goals

    The primary science goal of the new joint observatory is to reach a sensitivity for detecting dark matter in our galaxy by at least a factor of 10 beyond that of the current generation of detectors.

    The detector’s large mass and unprecedented low background level will also enable world-leading searches for additional signatures of physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics that would similarly revolutionize our understanding of the universe. In particular, the secondary science goal will be the search for neutrinoless double-beta decay in xenon, shedding light on the nature of the neutrino and the imbalance of matter and antimatter in the universe.

    The observatory will also perform searches for other rare processes and particles such as axions, hypothetical particles that might be emitted from the Sun. It will also measure neutrinos created in the Sun, the Earth’s atmosphere, and potentially those from Galactic supernovae.

    Experiments

    The current xenon-based experiments XENONnT and LUX-ZEPLIN will start their first science runs in 2021, to lead the race to detect the first signs of new particles and interactions. These experiments employ 5.9 and 7.0 tonnes of liquid xenon for the search, respectively.

    The LUX-ZEPLIN experiment operates at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in the USA.  The XENONnT experiment is located at the INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory (LNGS) in Italy. DARWIN is the evolution of the XENON program and includes additional groups, focusing on several R&D aspects required for the much larger detector.

    After a very successful first joint workshop in April 2021, 104 research group leaders from 16 countries have signed a memorandum of understanding on July 6, 2021.  Scientific cooperation has now begun to realize this next-generation rare event observatory.

    Adapted from a press released by the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) and Gran Sasso National Laboratory (LNGS) on behalf of the DARWIN and LZ collaborations

    Research and teaching in theoretical physics to be enhanced as centre expands.

    New appointments

    Seven new appointments have been made this year to significantly strengthen the Higgs Centre’s research power and extend the breadth of its activities. 

    The new appointments include academic staff and research fellows:

    academic staff

    • Samuel Abreu
    • Sašo Grozdanov
    • Anton Ilderton
    • Alkistis Pourtsidou
    • Mao Zeng

    Higgs fellows

    • Suddhasattwa Brahma
    • Job Feldbrugge

    These appointments follow the recruitment of Professor Neil Turok as the inaugural Higgs Chair of Theoretical Physics in 2020.

    Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics

    The Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics was established in 2012 following the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN. It is built on the legacy of Peter Higgs and Edinburgh’s outstanding tradition, going back to key theoretical physicists including Max Born and Nick Kemmer.

    The purpose of the centre is to promote research excellence in theoretical physics, aiming to answer fundamental questions about Nature by developing new ideas and concepts. The Centre’s vision includes creating bridges between disciplines and combining graduate-school education in synergy with cutting-edge research. Accordingly, the Higgs Centre has launched highly successful Masters programmes in theoretical and mathematical physics and strengthened its PhD programme.

    In parallel, the Centre runs a diverse programme of workshops and schools, through which it has established itself as a global focal point in theoretical physics.

    World-leading vision

    Professor James Dunlop, Head of School of Physics and Astronomy, commented:

    In this most difficult of years, it is wonderful that the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics at Edinburgh has gone from strength to strength. Building on Neil Turok's appointment in 2020, we have now secured the talents of seven exciting world-leading researchers, whose broad interests will enhance and expand our existing strengths in theoretical physics, as well as forging new interdisciplinary links with Mathematics and Astrophysics/Cosmology. This further substantial investment demonstrates the commitment of the School of Physics & Astronomy and the University of Edinburgh to build on the legacy of Peter Higgs, ensuring that the Higgs Centre can deliver on its promise to be a genuinely world-leading centre for research and teaching in theoretical physics.

    Professor Einan Gardi, Director of the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics, said:

    The University of Edinburgh is making here a major strategic investment in theoretical physics. I am delighted to see this dream coming together.  I am thrilled to welcome each and every one of the new researchers to the Higgs Centre. We’ll do our best so that you will flourish and realise your potential. With so much talent and creativity around, I am more confident than ever that we can make big things happen in our field and beyond.

    Professor Neil Turok, Higgs Chair of Theoretical Physics, said:

    When we launched our recruitment drive last year, its outcome was somewhat uncertain because of the pandemic.  In the event, it greatly exceeded our hopes: we had a wonderful pool of applicants and every offer we made was accepted. We are really excited about the tide of new talent which will be joining the Higgs Centre this September.

    Professor Luigi Del Debbio, Head of Particle Physics Theory, said:

    I am delighted to see the appointment of seven new theorists in Edinburgh. Building on the award of the Nobel Prize to Peter Higgs in 2013, they will inject new momentum in a long-term strategy to boost our activities, inspire new generations of students and strengthen the commitment to excellence in the School of Physics and Astronomy. The University’s support for its core activities, research and teaching, must be the way forward in these difficult times.

    Funding was successfully secured for collaboration with external partners to develop a biofilm model for testing active ingredients for hand hygiene.

    Biofilm research

    A number of our researchers are involved in work relating to preventing, detecting, managing or engineering biofilms. Biofilms are communities of microbes, and they can have an enormous impact on human life and the health of the planet.

    Testing of skin disinfection formulations

    There is a need for simple, affordable and effective procedures for screening hand disinfectant products. Dr Susana Direito the lead and Principal Investigator of the project will work with colleagues from the School’s Institute for Condensed Matter and Complex Systems (Aidan Brown, Job Thijssen, Andreia Fonseca da Silva and Paul Hush), and industrial partners Bear Valley Ventures (Walter Gibson) and Aqualution Systems Limited (Nick Meakin and Michelle Lewis), to develop a human skin biofilm model that can be used for high-throughput testing of novel skin disinfection formulations. It is hoped that use of the model will lead to the development of new hand hygiene products to improve health around the world.

    Project funding

    Funding for this project was received from the National Biofilms Innovation Centre (NBIC) as part of their forth Proof of Concept. A total of 18 biofilm-related projects have been funded by NBIC during this latest round, which cover a wide range of sectors including health, hygiene, industrial processing, food, water, oral care, personal care, anaerobic digestion, waste and wastewater and biotechnology.

    Astronomers have shed light on the mystery of why some galaxies look blue while others appear red.

    Galaxies exhibit many different features, in terms of size, shape and colour. The most distinguishable separation, known since the time of Edwin Hubble, is into two families: blue star-forming spiral galaxies, and red non-star forming elliptical galaxies. How they end up in this bimodality is, to this day, a major question in galaxy formation.

    In general, astronomers believe that red galaxies live in massive dark matter halos, while blue galaxies live in more moderate-mass ones. But recent observations suggest that both types of galaxies can be hosted by even the same halo mass, and blue galaxies have more stars than red ones. Why does this trend exist, and is it telling us something fundamental about the origin of the colour bimodality? Many previous galaxy formation models have failed to reproduce this observed trend. In contrast, the state-of-the-art SIMBA simulation (figure 1), led by the Institute for Astronomy’s Dr Weiguang Cui, is remarkably successful.

    Encouraged by this success, Dr Cui and the team of researchers explored how the colour bimodality originates by tracking individual simulated galaxies back in time. It was revealed that this bimodality originates in differences between their host halo mass growth history, called halo assembly bias (left panel on figure 2), and its unexpected interplay with SIMBA’s unique models that quench galaxies using the energy released from black hole growth.

    Differences in the way the dark matter halos – a key building block of galaxies – develop over time influence which type of galaxy will form and the number of stars they contain. The team found that halos with the same mass that formed earlier tend to contain blue galaxies while those that formed later usually contain red ones. The team also found that the way energy is released from black holes – which are found at the centre of every galaxy – is crucial. How this happens affects whether a galaxy will be blue or red, researchers say. The findings show that halos formed later will result in their galaxies with less gas, which causes black holes to emit huge amounts of energy that stops the formation of new stars. By contrast, halos that formed earlier contain more gas, which causes black holes to release less energy and does not prevent new stars forming.

    SIMBA thus provides a significant step forward in understanding the physical origin of galaxy bimodality, by connecting large-scale structure formation with small-scale processes of black hole growth and feedback.

    Prof John A. Peacock said, “We are working with one of the most sophisticated numerical models of galaxy formation, and it’s really encouraging to see that the new details in the simulation produce galaxies that look more and more like those in the real universe”.

    Prof Romeel Dave added, "Such increasingly realistic simulations give us confidence that we are moving towards understanding how the billions of galaxies we see in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colours formed out of the primordial soup of the Big Bang."

    The research, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, was funded by the European Research Council, Royal Society and Science and Technology Facilities Council.

    Puzzles, tours and a play about psychology and quantum physics: some of the School’s events this year.

    A packed programme of online and in-person events celebrating the power of science and the importance of connection has been unveiled by the organisers of the citywide festival.

    It will feature more than 200 events, tours, exhibitions, workshops for children, young people and adults, of which 70 per cent are available online and free to access to anyone around the world.

    The festival – the world’s first and Europe’s biggest – has this year moved away from its usual Easter holiday dates to take place online and in person between 26 June and 11 July.

    The School of Physics and Astronomy is involved in a number of activities: solve our science puzzles; take a self-led tour and learn about biofilms; virtually explore the James Clerk Maxwell building to learn about the work we do and meet some of our students and staff.