A PhD student in the School of Physics and Astronomy has been chosen to present his research at the House of Commons as a finalist in the highly competitive SET for BRITAIN 2016 competition. Flaviu Cipcigan, a PhD student jointly funded by the University of Edinburgh and the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), will present his research, “A model of the water molecule using electrons on a spring”, at Westminster on Monday 7th March 2016.
Flaviu’s research concerns the creation of a new method to accurately and efficiently calculate intermolecular forces using ‘electrons on a spring’ – quantum Drude oscillators. These are model oscillators that behave according to laws of molecular mechanics within a force field, and can thus be used to simulate models of electronic polarizability. His work is crucial to advancing our ability to use computer simulations to design molecules with specific intended functions. This work is directly applicable to a number of important fields, such as drug design and the creation of new materials for energy storage.
Flaviu and his team utilised the technology to create a broad, but predictive model for water, and in doing so advanced our understanding of this vital substance. He and his team discovered the reasons for one of water’s most interesting properties – its unusually high surface tension. The work of Flaviu and his team discovered previously unrecorded structural motifs within the molecule which are thought to be responsible for this property. His PhD work is as a result of a joint collaboration between NPL (Vlad Sokhan and Jason Crain) and IBM (Glenn Martyna).
Flaviu has been shortlisted from hundreds of other applicants to the SET for BRITAIN 2016 competition, a national poster competition for early-career scientists across all major scientific disciplines. The competition gives early-stage and early-career researchers the chance to present their research and win a prize of up to £3,000. Gold medal winners in all the categories will be chosen after the presentation at the House of Commons. It also allows these researchers to engage with a number of Parliamentarians, and raise the profile of their research, their institutions, and themselves.
This is an excellent opportunity for Flaviu and we wish him all the best in the final.
Work has begun on constructing the Higgs Centre for Innovation at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh.
£11 million investment
The Centre will support start-up businesses with the aim of creating new market opportunities, especially in big data and space technologies. It is funded through a £10.7 million investment from the UK Government. The Science and Technology Facilities Council will invest £2million over five years to operate the centre.
Entrepreneurial boost
The centre will aim to link industry with cutting-edge scientific and engineering expertise at the STFC’s UK Astronomy Technology Centre. It will focus on supporting business both through incubation activities and access to facilities for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Connecting engineers, academics and PhD students directly with small businesses will help boost their entrepreneurial experience at the start of their research careers.
The stand-alone building at the Royal Observatory will be run by the Science and Technology Facilities Council in partnership with the University. The centre is due to be completed in 2017.
“The construction of the Higgs Centre for Innovation is an exciting new development in the long established collaboration between STFC and the University of Edinburgh at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. The new centre will cement Edinburgh's reputation as a world leader in the fields of astrophysics and big data, and provide new opportunities for knowledge exchange between astronomers, particle physicists, engineers and industry.” Prof. James Dunlop, Head of the Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh
A huge amount of work has been put in by all partners over the past year to develop plans for the Higgs Centre for Innovation and now we begin the exciting phase of seeing it built before our eyes. We look forward to the completion of this important project and the benefits it will bring to both future generations of scientists and industry." Gillian Wright, Director of the UK Astronomy Technology Centre
The construction of the Higgs Centre for Innovation is an exciting new development in the long-established collaboration between STFC and the University of Edinburgh at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. The new centre will cement Edinburgh's reputation as a world leader in the fields of astrophysics and big data, and provide new opportunities for knowledge exchange between astronomers, particle physicists, engineers and industry.
The Higgs Centre for Innovation is named in honour of Professor Peter Higgs of the University’s School of Physics and Astronomy. The pioneering scientist received a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013 for his prediction of the existence of the Higgs boson particle, which enables other particles to acquire mass. This fundamental particle was discovered by scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 2012.
Image gallery
Dr Rosalind Allen of the School's Institute of Condensed Matter & Complex Systems has been awarded a 1.8m euro Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council (ERC).
The award will support the next five years of Rosalind's work on the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections - a current major global health issue. Together with collaborators including the School's Dr Bartek Waclaw, she will use experiments and computer simulations to understand why some infections, in which the bacteria form dense colonies called biofilms, are especially hard to treat with antibiotics. Rosalind will also investigate whether these spatially structured infections could act as important sources of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
"I am delighted to receive this funding from the ERC. Biological physics has been an expanding area within the School for some years now, and the School's investment in labs and both experimental and computer support has been an important factor in helping me to get this grant. Antibiotic-resistant infections are a growing and widely recognised problem worldwide. As physicists we can bring a new perspective to understanding the factors that control the emergence of these resistant infections and I am delighted to contribute to this effort." Dr Rosalind Allen, Institute of Condensed Matter & Complex Systems
Image gallery
Prof Jim Dunlop of the School of Physics & Astronomy has been awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s (RAS) Herschel Medal for his pioneering research into galaxy formation.
The prize, to be presented at an event in June, is one of a series presented annually by the RAS.
Award citation
In the golden age of our current paradigm for galaxy formation, the hierarchical Cold Dark Matter Universe, and before the discovery that the Universe needs an unknown Dark Energy to explain its present acceleration, Jim Dunlop was discovering that galaxies as old as the Universe - perhaps, even older - existed just a couple of billion years after the Big Bang.
This surprising discovery towards the end of the ’90s found corroboration among colleagues in a series of papers which led to the acceptance of another seemingly contradictory paradigm, the baryonic downsizing in galaxy formation, which sees the most massive galaxies forming first in the Universe. Jim Dunlop’s fortitude to trespass the known territory pushed the frontiers of extra-galactic astrophysics and observational cosmology towards the limits of knowledge. He discovered the first dust-enshrouded galaxies just two at redshift larger than 3 and played a key role in shifting the understanding of galaxy evolution into the yet unknown territory of sub-millimetre cosmology.
Presently Professor Jim Dunlop, Head of the Institute of Astronomy in Edinburgh, leads the most ambitious international programme to discover and understand the first galaxies, at epochs when the Universe saw its first light. Understanding cosmic re-ionisation, which tells about the link between the primordial Universe and galaxy formation, is a primary goal of modern astrophysics and cosmology.
For these reasons, Professor Dunlop is awarded the Herschel Medal.
Experiments by researchers in the School's Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions (CSEC) have reached the highest ever recorded pressures on dense hydrogen, in excess of the pressures found at the centre of the Earth.
As reported in the prestigious "Nature” magazine, the study provides evidence that at above 350 GPa (3,500,000 atm) and at room temperature hydrogen adopts a novel structure. Interestingly the results are suggestive that this new phase could prove to be the precursor to the long sought metallic phase of hydrogen, predicted over 80 years ago by theory.
As the simplest, lightest and most abundant element of the Universe, hydrogen is of fundamental interest in many fields of science. At high pressure and low temperatures, hydrogen is predicted to transform from a molecular system to a metallic (atomic) state. This behaviour is crucial to planetary science as hydrogen is believed to be found in the centre of Jovian planets and to be the source of their exceptionally high magnetic fields. This predicted state is also believed to exhibit rich phenomena such as superconductivity and super-fluidity, which would result in many technological breakthroughs. Reaching such conditions with hydrogen in the experimental laboratory however has been a great challenge in the field of high pressure research: only 4 years ago it was limited to less than half of the pressure recorded in the study.
Through new technological breakthroughs in the containment of hot hydrogen in diamond anvil cell experiments, Philip Dalladay-Simpson, Ross Howie and Eugene Gregoryanz at the Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions report that above 350 GPa hydrogen adopts a novel phase, phase V.
Tracking this transformation over a large pressure regime up to 400 GPa and up to 450 K through Raman spectroscopy and comparing with theoretically predicted structures, the team suggest that phase V could be the precursor to the experimentally elusive, completely metallic and atomic phase of hydrogen. The work will undoubtedly reinvigorate both theoretical and experimental efforts to understand these newly discovered phases and hydrogen’s evolution to a purely metallic (atomic) structure.
"The past 30 years of high-pressure research saw numerous claims of the creation of metallic hydrogen in the laboratory with the latest being made in 2011, but all these claims were later disproved. Our study presents the first experimental evidence that hydrogen could behave as predicted, although at much higher pressures than previously thought." Prof. Eugene Gregoryanz, Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions
Image gallery
Cait MacPhee, Professor of Biological Physics, has been made a CBE.
Congratulations to Cait MacPhee who was recognised in the Queen’s New Year's Honours list for her services to women in Physics.
Cait works with primary school teachers across Scotland, increasing their confidence in incorporating science into their day-to-day lessons. She also led the School's succesful bids for the Athena SWAN Silver and Project Juno Champion awards.
Project Juno and Athena SWAN
The Institute of Physics' Project Juno recognises and rewards departments that can demonstrate they have taken action to address the under-representation of women in university physics and to encourage better practice for both women and men.
Athena SWAN supports women in science, engineering and technology, and in the arts, humanities, social sciences, business and law, and in professional and support roles, and for trans staff and students.
The Edinburgh Particle Physics Experiment group has been successful in obtaining combined funding of £3m from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).
This award will support the group's work over the next 4 years for the ATLAS and LHCb experiments at CERN, the dark matter experiment Lux-Zeplin, and plans for a neutrino experiment (Hyper-Kamiokande) in Japan.
The activities of these major international experiments include research into the properties of the Higgs boson, the search for new particles beyond the standard model such as dark matter, and investigations into the difference between matter and antimatter in beauty hadrons and neutrinos.
"This is excellent news. The LHC successfully started operating again this year at almost twice the beam energy. Over the next few years, Edinburgh physicists are looking forward to recording and analysing even larger data samples. We hope this will allow us to shed light on three of the major unsolved questions about how nature works, namely the origin of mass, dark matter and the asymmetry between matter and antimatter." Prof. Franz Muheim, head of the Particle Physics Experiment group at the University of Edinburgh
"This funding is welcome news for the Atlas experiment group in Edinburgh! By supporting our team of academics, researchers, engineer and technicians, we can take the next steps in investigating the Higgs boson particle, and in answering some outstanding mysteries of our universe, such as the existence of dark matter and how to incorporate the force of gravity into theories of quantum mechanics." Dr Victoria Martin, Particle Physics Experiment group
Image gallery
Postdoctoral Research Associate Flavia Dias has joined 40 other scientists in this year's fast-paced live chats with pupils from nearly 160 UK schools.
Between the 9th and 20th of November, the scientists will be competing for the school pupils’ votes by answering questions on everything from particle physics, to the ageing body, to the heart, to changing fish populations.
"I find it very satisfying to interact with students and share my enthusiasm about the beauty of Particle Physics and how it helps us understand the Universe. Talking to the young generation also reminds me to look back into the bigger picture and to think outside the box. It's a great experience that both students and scientists can benefit from." Flavia Dias, Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics
What is ‘I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here’?
‘I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here’ is a free online event where school students get to meet and interact with scientists. It’s a free X Factor-style competition between scientists, where the students are the judges. Students challenge the scientists over intense, fast-paced, online live CHATs. Then they ask the scientists all the questions they want to, and vote for their favourite scientist to win a prize of £500 to communicate their work with the public.
Twitter: @imascientist, #IASUK.
Image gallery
Weather patterns in a mysterious world beyond our solar system have been revealed for the first time, a study suggests.
Layers of clouds, made up of hot dust and droplets of molten iron, have been detected on a planet-like object found 75 light years from Earth, researchers say. Findings from the study could improve scientists’ ability to find out if conditions in far-off planets are capable of sustaining life.
Cloud cover
University researchers used a telescope in Chile to study the weather systems in the distant world - known as PSO J318.5-22 - which is estimated to be around 20 million-years-old. They captured hundreds of infra-red images of the object as it rotated over a 5-hour period. By comparing the brightness of PSO J318.5-22 with neighbouring bodies, the team discovered that it is covered in multiple layers of thick and thin cloud.
Measuring brightness
The far-off world is around the same size as Jupiter - the largest planet in our solar system - but is roughly eight times more massive, the team says. Temperatures inside clouds on PSO J318.5-22 exceed 800°C, researchers say. The team was able to accurately measure changes in brightness on PSO J318.5-22 because it does not orbit a star. Stars like our sun emit huge amounts of light, which can complicate measurements made of the brightness of objects orbiting them, researchers say.
Earth-like planets
Such techniques may eventually be applicable to cooler, lower mass planets, which are more likely to be capable of supporting life.
The study, published in The Astrophysical Journal, was funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council. The work also involved institutions in the US, Germany, France and Spain.
We're working on extending this technique to giant planets around young stars, and eventually we hope to detect weather in Earth-like exoplanets that may harbour life.
Dr Beth Biller, Chancellor's Fellow, School of Physics and Astronomy
Image gallery
Congratulations to Michal Michalowski, a researcher at the Institute for Astronomy, who was chosen in recognition of outstanding, individual accomplishments in the field of astronomy.
The full citation reads: "Dr Michalowski has made a significant contribution to our understanding of formation and evolution of dust in the Universe, and he is an independent and extraordinarily productive researcher. In particular, Dr Michalowski has found evidences that in the distant universe most of dust formed through grain growth in the interstellar medium, and was not directly produced by supernovae or asymptotic giant branch stars. Dr Michalowski has also proven that a large fraction of star formation activity in the Universe happened in the most luminous galaxies, which is a significant constraint on cosmological galaxy evolution models, and that these luminous galaxies have similar characteristics to their fainter counterparts. Moreover, Dr Michalowski found that most of stars in these luminous galaxies were formed before the current strong star-formation episode."
"I am honoured to receive this award. It was established in 1970 and since then has been awarded to many distinguished Polish astronomers. I am especially happy because now, together with the RAS award, the astronomical communities of the country where I am from and the country where I work have both recognised the importance of my research." Michal Michalowski, Institute for Astronomy
