News archive: 2011

Yearly listings of School news.

CERN hints at existence of Higgs boson

15 December 2011
Experiments at CERN point towards the discovery of the Higgs boson particle, scientists at the organisation have said.

An inside view of the hunt for the Higgs boson

14 December 2011
Dr Victoria Martin, a lecturer and researcher in particle physics at the University of Edinburgh, explains the background to the hunt for the Higg's Boson in an article in The Scotsman. You can find out more on our new website: Peter Higgs and the Higgs Boson.

Chancellor's Fellowships

02 December 2011
The University of Edinburgh intends to appoint up to 100 Chancellor’s Fellowships as an investment in the future of teaching and research.

SUPA Postgrad opportunities

01 December 2011
Up to 15 fully-funded Prize PhD studentships and over 100 other funded PhD places in Physics in Scotland.

MSc in HPC: scholarships available for UK and EU students

25 November 2011
High Performance Computing: School of Physics and Astronomy UK and EU Master's Scholarships

EdPER wins eAssessment award

22 November 2011
Congratulations to EdPER for winning the Formative e-Assessment category at this year's Scottish e-Assessment Awards.

LHCb in CERN reaches a milestone in exploring the asymmetry between matter and antimatter

10 November 2011
The World's most precise measurement of an important B meson decay has been made at CERN as part of the effort to explain the matter-antimatter imbalance in the Universe.

School student takes Quantum Computing to final round of SET Student of the Year Award

27 October 2011
Computational Physics student Flaviu Cipcigan reached the final of the Science, Engineering & Technology (SET) Student of the Year Awards with his work on Quantum Computing. He tells us what was involved.

Mixing business with Physics

27 October 2011
Student entrepreneur wins a place at Stockholm International Youth Science Seminar and the Nobel festivities.

ICMCS researchers announce the invention of a new type of soft gel in the top journal ‘Science’

24 October 2011
A new type of soft gel developed by School researchers may have important implications for the future use of liquid crystals.

Application call: SUPA support programmes for Distinguished Visitors and Events

11 October 2011
Applications are invited to the SUPA Graduate School's Distinguished Visitors and Events support programmes.

Euclid mission to understand dark universe joins European Space Agency

11 October 2011
The Euclid satellite will observe 1.5 billion galaxies in an effort to track the effects of dark energy, dark matter and gravity on the expansion and growth of cosmic structures in the Universe over the last 10 billion years.

Pathogen RNA research paper chosen as Research Highlight by American Institute of Physics

28 September 2011
A paper co-authored by the School's Gerard Giraud and Jason Crain has been chosen as a Research Highlight by The American Institute of Physics journal 'Biomicrofluidics'.

SOUND success in Glasgow

22 September 2011
The SOUND exhibition has toured the world and is currently installed in Glasgow.

Postgrad Open Day: 18th November

22 September 2011
Prospective postgraduate students are warmly invited to visit the School of Physics & Astronomy during the next Open Day on Friday 18th November.

School staff join RSE's new Young Academy of Scotland

07 September 2011
Four academics in the School of Physics & Astronomy are among the first members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh's new Young Academy of Scotland.

Making music with computer models

21 July 2011
Computer chips developed for gaming have the potential to create more realistic synthesised music.

Travel grants available for researchers who can report on the latest trends in their discipline

14 July 2011
The Software Sustainability Institute is on the lookout for researchers who use software in their work and who have a good understanding of current developments in their discipline.

Investigating new ways of detecting cancers

11 July 2011
Staff from School's Institute for Condensed Matter & Complex Systems publish joint research in Journal of Biological Chemistry.

IfA Postdoc awarded Royal Astronomical Society prize

07 July 2011
Dr Duncan Forgan of the Institute for Astronomy has been recognised with an award from the prestigious Royal Astronomical Society.

School establishes first Masters-level distance learning courses

01 July 2011
School project team is awarded significant startup funding from the University's Distance Education Initiative fund (DEI) to set up innovative online Masters courses.

Ancient supermassive black hole found

29 June 2011
University scientists have helped discover a supermassive black hole, the furthest away to be seen.

PhD studentship at EPCC, The University of Edinburgh

27 June 2011
EPCC is the supercomputer centre at the University of Edinburgh, and one of the leading High Performance Computing (HPC) centres in Europe. This PhD studentship is funded and co-supervised by AWE.

Physics on the radio

20 June 2011
Dr Victoria Martin talks about ATLAS and the Large Hadron Collider on BBC Radio Scotland.

EPSRC grant for rare event simulations

31 May 2011
A team of researchers from the Institute of Condensed Matter and Complex Systems and EPCC has been awarded £297,000 by EPSRC to develop software for simulating rare events in soft matter and biological systems.

School researcher wins prestigious Leverhulme research fellowship

30 May 2011
Dr Bartlomiej Waclaw, an Institute of Condensed Matter and Complex Systems researcher, has been awarded a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellowship.

School PhD student wins SUPA prize

13 May 2011
Nuclear Physics Group student wins the annual SUPA presentation award.

School group's double publishing success

12 May 2011
Two papers from the Soft, Biological and Statistical Physics group appeared in the 22nd April edition of Physical Review Letters.

SOUND in a man-made environment

28 April 2011
New website explores how noise affects our lives.

MSc in High Performance Computing Virtual Open Days: April 28 and May 5

15 April 2011
Meet the people behind our MSc in High Performance Computing, which trains the next generation of computational science professionals.

Investigating the anti-microbial potential of peptides

14 April 2011
Institute for Condensed Matter & Complex Systems and Oxford University receive EPSRC support for molecular research.

Edinburgh International Science Festival

04 April 2011
'Hunting the Higgs Boson' at the National Museum.

EUSA teaching awards success

29 March 2011
Physics wins for innovative teaching and best postgraduate tutor.

MSc in HPC: Virtual Open Days

25 March 2011
Next Open Days: 28 March and 6 April.

School postdoc invited to give public lecture on Dark Matter

24 February 2011
Dr Chamkaur Ghag, a postdoctoral research assistant in the School's Nuclear Physics Group, has been invited to give the Cleveland Institution of Engineers' public lecture in March.

Physics journal hat-trick for ICMCS

14 February 2011
Researchers in the Institute of Condensed Matter and Complex Systems have published three papers in two successive issues of the top physics journal Physical Review Letters, straddling the turn of the year.

Search for Earth-like planets takes a great leap forward

14 February 2011
New HARPS-N telescope will support NASA's Kepler mission.

World’s largest telescope eyes up black hole

01 February 2011
UK telescope joins pan-European LOFAR network to create multinational image.

Urban soundscapes and landscapes

27 January 2011
School Acoustic Group collaborates on art installation at Informatics Forum.

Postgraduate Virtual Open Week: 21–25 February 2011

25 January 2011
Meet the people behind our MSc in High Performance Computing, which trains the next generation of computational science professionals.

Exploring the Dark Universe

25 January 2011
Dr Alex Murphy delivers Millennium Lecture at Bath University

New Foundation Programme improves international students' access to School’s degree courses

17 January 2011
One-year foundation level course makes the School's degree courses accessible to students whose qualifications have previously not been recognised by the University of Edinburgh.

Prof. Richard Kenway appointed Chair of PRACE Scientific Steering Committee

17 January 2011
New role will advise on creation and use of Europe-wide research computing infrastructure.