News archive: 2013

Yearly listings of School news.

Higgs Centre award welcomed

23 December 2013
Higgs Centre to receive £2 million contribution from Scottish Government.

School student wins 'Science. Polish Perspectives' awards

16 December 2013
Congratulations to 4th-year PhD student Michal Kepa, who won the 1st Audience Award and the 2nd Jury Award for his presentation at the Science. Polish Perspectives conference in Cambridge in November.

Prof. Higgs collects Nobel award

10 December 2013
The celebrated physicist Prof. Peter Higgs has travelled to Stockholm to collect his Nobel prize in Physics.

Elite research centre to build on Higgs’ Nobel legacy

06 December 2013
£10.7million investment by the Treasury will help create Higgs Centre for Innovation.

New £43m, 1.56 Petaflops supercomputing service for UK research

02 December 2013
ARCHER, the next national HPC service for academic research, will be housed by the University.

Europe’s billion-star surveyor ready for launch

26 November 2013
Gaia's mission to create a highly accurate 3D map of our galaxy will begin on 19 December.

Postgraduate Open Day

01 November 2013
The University of Edinburgh’s next Postgraduate Open Day will take place on Friday 22 November.

Outstanding students receive medals and awards

31 October 2013
Congratulations to students who received Medals and Certificates at the School of Physics & Astronomy awards ceremony in the Playfair Library.

Dark matter detector on track

31 October 2013
Scientists at Edinburgh have helped create the most sensitive dark matter detector in the world, new results show.

New Earth-sized exoplanet that 'shouldn't exist' baffles astronomers

30 October 2013
First known Earth-sized exoplanet with an Earth-like density challenges current theories of planet formation.

Edinburgh astronomers support new Pan-Tropical Forest Observatory

29 October 2013
Edinburgh astronomers to help measure changes at a global scale on our own planet, beginning with tropical forests.

School researcher wins Very Early Career Women in Physics Award

28 October 2013
Congratulations to PhD student Anne Pawsey who has been awarded the 2013 Shell and Institute of Physics Very Early Career Women in Physics Award.

Higgs Centre marks new phase with dedicated building

14 October 2013
Following Prof. Peter Higgs’ Nobel award, the University is to further develop its expertise in theoretical physics.

Home of Higgs’ pioneering theory offers Nobel congratulations

08 October 2013
The University of Edinburgh has welcomed the award of a Nobel Prize in Physics to Peter Higgs, Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics.

School graduate scoops top prize at international enterprise competition

07 October 2013
Flaviu Cipcigan wins ‘Dragon’s Den’ style competition at Entrepreneurs’ Festival

Outreach: supercomputing dinosaurs at Bang Goes the Borders

25 September 2013
EPCC, the supercomputing centre based in the School, took its dinosaur-racing demo along to Bang Goes the Borders, a free local science festival.

Free online Higgs boson course is launched

18 September 2013
The work of Edinburgh physicist Prof. Peter Higgs can now be studied online for free in the new course, The Discovery of the Higgs Boson.

New students' welcome week

05 September 2013
We're here to help all our new students who will be joining us this month.

Investigating carbon cycling on Disko Island

29 August 2013
The Deep Carbon Observatory sent four researchers to explore Disko Island, Greenland, as a test-bed for understanding carbon cycling ranging from the Earth’s mantle to the deep biosphere.

Fabiola Gianotti appointed Honorary Professor

15 August 2013
The former spokesperson of the Atlas collaboration, who co-announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, has been appointed an Honorary Professor at the School.

Squeezing soft materials: the mechanical properties of emulsions stabilised by solid particles

05 August 2013
Soft Matter journal has published a paper that details a School research team's investigations into the mechanical properties of emulsions that are stabilized by micron-sized particles.

'Bacterial raincoat' found to protect bacteria from the environment

30 July 2013
A Scottish research team that includes the School's Cait McPhee and Keith Bromley has uncovered the workings of a 'bacterial raincoat' that helps protect bacteria from changes in their environment.

Discovering the Higgs Boson: Royal Society Exhibition 2013

29 July 2013
School staff and students explain the science of the Higgs boson at the Royal Society's summer exhibition.

International School of Physics Award

23 July 2013
The School's Flaviu Cipcigan has won the award for the best presentation at the International School of Physics "Enrico Fermi".

Video: An Audience With Peter Higgs

22 July 2013
In June, the School's Peter Higgs, Victoria Martin and Alan Walker gave a talk about the particle that bears Prof. Higgs' name.

Mars exploration goes to Iceland

22 July 2013
Volcanic zones in northern Iceland provide an ideal testbed for developing future robotic missions to Mars.

Making scientific code run faster

10 July 2013
EPCC is the supercomputing centre at the University of Edinburgh. Jon Hill of Imperial College writes about how working with EPCC has helped his modelling and computation research.

Intergalactic magnifying glasses could help astronomers map galaxy centres

01 July 2013
An international team of astronomers may have found a new way to map quasars, the energetic and luminous central regions often found in distant galaxies.

Statistical physics reveals the power of simple word-learning strategies

24 June 2013
Mathematical model shows two simple strategies can work together to allow large numbers of words to be learned almost as quickly as they are encountered.

Peter Higgs receives award for scientific research

05 June 2013
Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research recognises collective effort to solve one of the deepest mysteries of physics.

Science Conversations @ Edinburgh

03 June 2013
An exciting range of interactive discussions, drawing on various fields of science, will be on offer from 17-28 June.

Meet the School's writer in residence, Pippa Goldschmidt

28 May 2013
Pippa was formerly a professional astronomer but is now a fiction writer, interested in how scientists live and work.

School graduate wins prize for best talk

30 April 2013
Flaviu Cipcigan awarded prize for best talk at 'Water at interfaces' conference.

Discovery of a new matter-antimatter difference

26 April 2013
The LHCb experiment has observed a matter-antimatter difference in the neutral Bs meson system, important to our understanding of the absence of antimatter in the Universe.

EUSA teaching award for Kristel Torokoff

17 April 2013
School Lecturer awarded 'Feedback School Teaching Award' by Edinburgh University Students' Association

Mike Cates receives European Society of Rheology award

09 April 2013
Prof. Mike Cates of the School of Physics & Astronomy has been awarded the 2013 Weissenberg Award of the European Society of Rheology.

Peter Higgs documentary to be screened on BBC1

08 April 2013
A 30-minute documentary called 'Particle Man' will be shown on BBC One on Wednesday 17th April.

Young Academy of Scotland

25 March 2013
Two members of the School have joined the Royal Society's Young Academy of Scotland, a body of individuals who have demonstrated outstanding ability in their work.

New scholarships for the School’s MSc Programmes

21 March 2013
New financial support for students in Theoretical Physics, Mathematical Physics and High Performance Computing

Chancellor’s Fellowships launched

20 March 2013
The School of Physics & Astronomy to appoint new Chancellor's Fellows

Outreach: learning the scientific method through games

15 March 2013
Researchers at the Institute for Astronomy have combined real world physics with a computer game to demonstrate the application of the scientific method.

Latest results indicate that new particle is a Higgs boson

14 March 2013
Latest results from CERN further reinforce that the particle discovered last year is a Higgs boson.

Huge map of the distant Universe reaches halfway point

11 March 2013
VLT survey charts positions of 55,000 galaxies.

MSc in High Performance Computing: Virtual Open Days

08 March 2013
Learn all about the MSc in HPC at our virtual Open Days in March, April and May.

Studying abroad: a year in Seattle

25 February 2013
Max Nolte, an MPhys Computational Physics student, is spending his Fourth Year of studies at the University of Washington.

Schools physics prize honours Peter Higgs

04 February 2013
New prize offers outstanding school physicists the chance to win a trip to CERN.

The Higgs Symposium

15 January 2013
The Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics brought together over a hundred physicists to discuss fundamental questions in particle physics.

New Years Honours for Peter Higgs and Alan Walker

08 January 2013
Two members of the School of Physics & Astronomy have been recognised in the 2013 New Year’s Honours List.