The School of Physics and Astronomy has had both its Juno Champion and Athena SWAN Silver status renewed in recognition of the work undertaken and continuing efforts in addressing gender equality and fostering a more inclusive working environment.
Award schemes
Project Juno is the Institute of Physics’ flagship gender equality award for university physics departments and schools of physics, and other related organisations.
The Athena SWAN Charter, managed by Advance HE, is a framework which is used across the globe to support and transform gender equality within higher education and research.
The School of Physics and Astronomy has been re-awarded both Juno Champion and Athena SWAN Silver status for a further four years. Our status for both awards is valid until 31 January 2027.
Juno Champion is the currently the highest level of the Juno award. An agreement between the Institute of Physics (IOP) and Advance HE allowed us to obtain our Athena SWAN award from our Juno award.
School commitment
As part of the submission to the IOP, the School created an Action Plan aimed at addressing some systematic inequalities faced by underrepresented groups in the School and on making the School more inclusive. These actions include:
- annual monitoring of gender balance of our students and staff
- student focus groups to understand the needs of students in underrepresented groups
- creating the Carers’ Fund - to cover caring costs associated with attendance at conferences, meetings & research visits
- improved support for neurodiverse staff and students - through our Neurodiversity Network
- updating staff recruitment procedures and providing improved induction for new staff starting at the School
- improved workload monitoring for academic staff
- mentoring provision for postdoctoral staff
- continuing conversations around decolonising aspects of the taught physics curriculum.
Much of the work is done by member of the School’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, but many other colleagues have made a contribution and commitment to this work.
Prof Jim Dunlop, Head of School, reflected:
These awards reflect the widespread desire within the School to ensure that in our pursuit of excellence, we enable all to flourish. I am really pleased with the work we have done and the commitment demonstrated by colleagues. Such work continues however, and we aim to improve our ways of working further over the coming years.
Prof Victoria Martin, Director of Equality, Diversity & Inclusion for the School said:
I am proud with the work we have done to make the School a fairer place, and the recognition of this by the renewal of these awards. I would like to thank members of the School’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, as well as wider colleagues, for their continuing support and involvement.
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Congratulations to Gary Robertson who has been awarded a prestigious LHCb Early Career Scientist award for the successful delivery of a major upgrade of the RICH detector.
Gary Robertson has been awarded a LHCb Early Career Scientist award by the LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty) experiment in a prize ceremony held at CERN.
Gary, a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Physics and Astronomy, was recognised for his contributions to the successful delivery of a major upgrade of the RICH (Ring-imaging Cherenkov) detector at the experiment. The LHCb experiment is one of four major experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, and is designed to study the decays of ‘heavy flavour’ particles, addressing fundamental questions such as why the universe is made out of matter, rather than anti-matter. The RICH detector at the experiment is used to distinguish between different types of particles produced in proton-proton collisions. The recent upgrade enables the experiment to increase the number of collisions studied per second by more than a factor of five, allowing the collaboration to continue making exciting studies of fundamental physics over the coming years. Gary was a key member of the team responsible for the commissioning and installation of the upgraded RICH detector.
The LHCb Early Career Scientist award is made annually at CERN in a prize ceremony, and is awarded by the experimental collaboration who operate the LHCb detector. The LHCb collaboration consists of over 1500 scientists from over 20 countries. Gary was one of 10 scientists who received the award this year.
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Congratulations to Dr Ragandeep Singh Sidhu who has secured funding to organise a seminar in nuclear astrophysics.
Bringing together experts from around the world to engage in discussions and knowledge exchange is a key element in paving the way for progress within research science communities.
Dr Ragandeep Singh Sidhu (Chair) with Prof Philip J Woods (Co-organiser), who are based in the School’s Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics, have successfully secured a grant worth €40,000 to organise a WE-Heraeus Seminar: Nuclear Astrophysics with Ion Storage Rings.
The event aims to bring together global experts, including those with experimental and theoretical backgrounds, who are engaged in various storage ring projects. The primary objective is to foster constructive discussions on the most promising avenues to maximize the impact of existing facilities and capitalise on synergies among research groups.
Scheduled for the final week of January 2024, the event will involve knowledge exchange and collaboration, paving the way for advancements in nuclear astrophysics.
Funding has been secured from the Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Foundation in Germany, a philanthropic funding foundation which supports scientific research and education, strengthens cooperation between researchers, and trains young scientists.
Dr Ragandeep Singh Sidhu commented:
I am overwhelmed to have been selected for this prestigious funding opportunity, which marks the first external funding success of my career. I am grateful for the support and recognition from Wilhelm und Else Heraeus-Stiftung and I am excited to organize the British-German WE-Heraeus-Seminar on Nuclear Astrophysics with Ion Storage Rings. This grant will provide invaluable resources to bring together experts in the field and facilitate productive discussions and collaborations. I am truly honoured and motivated to make this seminar a success.
Astronomers using the most powerful telescope ever built have identified a massive, densely packed galaxy 25 billion light years away.
The galaxy – known as GS-9209 – formed just 600 to 800 million years after the Big Bang, and is the earliest of its kind found to date, researchers say.
A team led by researchers from the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh has used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to reveal in detail the properties of GS-9209 for the first time.
Despite being around 10 times smaller than the Milky Way, GS-9209 has a similar number of stars to our own galaxy. These have a combined mass around 40 billion times that of our Sun, and were formed rapidly before star formation in GS-9209 stopped, the team says.
GS-9209 is the earliest known example of a galaxy no longer forming stars – known as a quiescent galaxy. When the team observed it at 1.25 billion years after the Big Bang, no stars had formed in the galaxy for about half a billion years.
Analysis also shows that GS-9209 contains a supermassive black hole at its centre that is five times larger than astronomers might anticipate in a galaxy with this number of stars. The discovery could explain why GS-9209 stopped forming new stars, the team says.
The growth of supermassive black holes releases huge amounts of high-energy radiation, which can heat up and push gas out of galaxies. This could have caused star formation in GS-9209 to stop, as stars form when clouds of dust and gas particles inside galaxies collapse under their own weight.
GS-9209 was first discovered in 2004 by Edinburgh PhD student Karina Caputi, who was supervised at the time by Professors Jim Dunlop and Ross McLure in the University’s School of Physics and Astronomy. Caputi is now a Professor at the University of Groningen, Netherlands.
The findings are published in the journal Nature. The research was supported by the Leverhulme Trust, Science and Technology Facilities Council and UK Research and Innovation.
Lead researcher Dr Adam Carnall of the School of Physics and Astronomy said:
The James Webb Space Telescope has already demonstrated that galaxies were growing larger and earlier than we ever suspected during the first billion years of cosmic history. This work gives us our first really detailed look at the properties of these early galaxies, charting in detail the history of GS-9209, which managed to form as many stars as our own Milky Way in just 800 million years after the Big Bang. The fact that we also see a very massive black hole in this galaxy was a big surprise, and lends a lot of weight to the idea that these black holes are what shut down star formation in early galaxies.
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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 Saturday 7th October and Saturday 28th October 2023. 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.
A team of astronomers have uncovered the largest cosmic explosion ever witnessed.
The explosion is more than ten times brighter than any known supernova (exploding star) and three times brighter than the brightest tidal disruption event, where a star falls into a supermassive black hole.
The explosion, known as AT2021lwx, has currently lasted over three years, compared to most supernovae which are only visibly bright for a few months. It took place nearly 8 billion light years away, when the universe was around 6 billion years old, and is still being detected by a network of telescopes.
The researchers believe that the explosion is a result of a vast cloud of gas, possibly thousands of times larger than our sun, that has been violently disrupted by a supermassive black hole. Fragments of the cloud would be swallowed up, sending shockwaves through its remnants, as well as into a large dusty ‘doughnut’ surrounding the black hole. Such events are very rare and nothing on this scale has been witnessed before.
Last year, astronomers witnessed the brightest explosion on record - a gamma-ray burst known as GRB 221009A. While this was brighter than AT2021lwx, it lasted for just a fraction of the time, meaning the overall energy released by the AT2021lwx explosion is far greater.
The team are now setting out to collect more data on the explosion - measuring different wavelengths, including X-rays which could reveal the object’s surface and temperature, and what underlying processes are taking place. They will also carry out upgraded computational simulations to test if these match their theory of what caused the explosion.
The research involved astronomers from a number of universities, including Professor Andy Lawrence from the University of Edinburgh, and was led by a team at the University of Southampton.
The findings of the research have been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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Congratulations to Dr Andrew McLeod who has been awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and will be joining the School’s Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics.
Fellowship scheme
The Royal Society University Research Fellowship scheme is for outstanding scientists who are in the early stages of their research career. It provides them with the opportunity and freedom to build an independent research career and pursue cutting-edge scientific research.
In addition to receiving the Fellowship, Dr McLeod has also been awarded enhanced research funds which will support an additional postdoctoral researcher for the duration of the grant.
The mathematics behind scattering amplitudes
Dr Andrew McLeod’s research focuses on the study of scattering amplitudes, which describe what happens when high-energy particles collide. He is particularly interested in understanding their mathematical structure, in order to develop more efficient ‘bootstrap’ methods for computing these functions directly from physical principles and knowledge of their mathematical properties. His research has given rise to some of the highest-order calculations of scattering amplitudes in perturbation theory, and has led to the discovery of a number of surprising new symmetries and dualities.
Andrew obtained his PhD from Stanford University, and has held postdoctoral positions at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and at CERN in Geneva. He will join the Higgs Centre in September.
Congratulations to the team who have been awarded for establishing the JCMB Biolab Sustainability group and for their commitment to sustainable changes in the lab.
A team within the School of Physics and Astronomy have received a Changemaker Award from the University’s Social Responsibility and Sustainability group for their actions in implementing sustainable changes in the School’s laboratories.
Colleagues Neil Corsie, Patricia Gonzalez, Rosa Santomartino and Tracy Scott and have been awarded for their commitment to establishing a JCMB Biolab Sustainability group. The work they have carried out so far includes:
- providing comprehensive training on the disposal of laboratory waste
- establishing recycling bins in each laboratory
- reducing single-use plastic
- implementing energy-saving initiatives.
The Changemaker Award recognises current students and staff who have made a noticeable positive impact by undertaking an impactful socially responsible or sustainable project, or by inspiring others to act in a more socially responsible or sustainable way.
32 University staff, students, societies and groups received a Changemaker Award this year.
Findings could have potential use for computing and magnetic memories.
Ever get a stubborn knot in your shoelace that seems nearly impossible to untangle? Topological knots are sort of like shoelace knots, only they are made of magnetic moments. In addition, they have the potential to dramatically improve computing capabilities, information technologies and storage platforms. An international team of scientists involving the University of Edinburgh, Argonne National Laboratory (USA), and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL) (USA) have taken work a step further in the quest to harness them.
The tangles of interlaced magnetic fields, called skyrmions, merons, or magnetic textures, are spawned by spinning electrons in certain compounds. One way to visualise these magnetic vortices is to consider the swirl pattern you see when you stir a glass of water.
The team led by Dr Elton Santos from the School of Physics and Astronomy, and Dr Luis Balicas (NHMFL) has shown the swirls in atomically thin layers of a synthetic crystalline compound of iron, germanium, and tellurium (Fe5-xGeTe2).
The researchers discovered that the magnetic vortices happened at and above room temperature, rather than at the extremely cold conditions needed in many technological applications. In addition, the team were able to measure the knots which have different topological characteristics not yet observed at the same compound until now. This could have a potential use in real-world devices, such as smart phones, external hard-drives and computers.
In terms of their detection, Dr Elton Santos explained:
You need to find a way to see the magnetic vortices: to detect their presence through an electrical signal, which creates a readable response like in a magnetic bit. What is surprising in our results is the different character of the vortices, when normally just one type would appear. Basic computing operations may take place if we understand how to switch between one to another.
Because these topological spin textures are measurable, small and stable, they hold promise for use as a basic unit in electronic information storage such as in novel Qubit for quantum technologies. The study of these complex, defect-like magnetic textures and their possible applications has taken off in recent years as physicists examine their potential. This work adds to a striking novelty in terms of topological textures of different types of spin textures at the same material, and their control via electrical/magnetic means.
Dr Santos goes on to explain:
The hybrid character of these spin quasi-particles in a versatile material might create new technologies with tunable information storage at low energy consumption.
Funding from the ESPRC and computer resources from EPCC Cirrus were used to conduct this research. The work features in the cover of this month’s Advanced Materials.
Congratulations to Dr Adam Carnall and Dr Liza Mijovic, recipients of the Chancellor’s Fellows scheme.
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 34 Fellows recruited in this round have a vision for future leadership in research and innovation, which may straddle leading a major area of research, forging new industry partnerships, or 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.
The Fellows will be recruited as part of a wider cohort and will be supported to achieve their research and leadership ambitions through mentoring, peer support and training opportunities.
Dr Adam Carnall
Dr Carnall's research focuses on the origins of the most massive galaxies in the Universe, studying their formation and evolution during the first few billion years of cosmic history. These massive galaxies follow an extreme evolutionary pathway, forming the majority of their stars very early in cosmic history, then shutting down (or quenching) star-formation activity, with the reasons for this still poorly understood. Dr Carnall will primarily be using data from the newly launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) during his Chancellor's Fellowship, having already been successful in winning observing time during the first year of JWST science operations.
Dr Liza Mijovic
Dr Mijovic will lead the development of novel experimental probes of the Higgs mechanism. In our current model of the fundamental particles and their interactions, called the Standard Model, the Higgs mechanism generates the particle masses. Could the Higgs mechanism also answer the major open questions about the Universe, such as those relating to generating masses of dark matter particles? This is a key open problem in particle physics, and Dr Mijovic will seek the answers at the Large Hadron Collider, CERN, and at future collider experiments.