The Scottish Funding Council recently awarded strategic funds to a joint initiative involving the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA), Scottish Universities Life Science Alliance (SULSA) and Scottish Imaging Network (SINAPSE) to develop and expand academic, clinical and industrial collaborations in Scotland around optical imaging.
Proof of Principle funding up to £5,000 is now available to support research or partnership activity with industry in order to drive novel optical imaging research in the context of life sciences and medicine. Projects that bridge the different research pools are strongly encouraged.
Closing date for applications is Friday 26 April 2019 at Noon. More information about this call, and the application form, can be found here.
Outstanding academics and celebrated professionals join Scotland’s National Academy
Scotland's National Academy, the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), has announced the names of 62 people becoming Fellows of the RSE this year. Hailing from sectors that range from the arts, business, science and technology and academia, they join the current RSE Fellowship whose varied expertise supports the advancement of learning and useful knowledge in Scottish public life.
SUPA is particularly pleased to note a number of its members being recognised:
Prof Stuart Reid, University of Strathclyde
Prof Robert Hadfield, University of Glasgow
Prof Gail McConnell, University of Strathclyde
Prof Jan Skakle, University of Aberdeen
In addition, Dr John Nicholls of M Squared Lasers has also been awarded Fellowship.
For information on all of this year's awardees, please visit the RSE news pages.
Weds 29 May, Technology & Innovation Centre, Strathclyde
The SUPA Gathering has built a reputation over the past 4 years as a showcase and celebration of world class physics research in Scotland. As well as talks highlighting some of the latest advances in physics research across all of the SUPA Themes, the programme offers examples of career opportunities for early career researchers, poster competition, and exhibition.
The 2019 Annual Gathering was very well attended, with 300 people from across SUPA universities and partners coming to the Technology & Innovation Centre at the University of Strathclyde.
This year's exhibition focussed on the impact of physics from both industry and academia, with over 20 exhibitors eager to talk to participants about the impact of their research and products.
Scottish innovation and collaboration have been highlighted in a new video produced for the APS March Meeting in Boston. Featuring interviews with our academics, researchers and the Chief Scientific Advisor for Scotland, the video highlights our strengths across our seven research themes, and our Graduate School, providing advanced training for our doctoral students.
The APS March meeting is held each year in Boston, USA, for more than 11,000 attendees from academia, industry and major labs.
See the full video here.
Paul Soler, Professor in Experimental Particle Physics at the University of Glasgow, said in a statement: “This is the first time that a baryon has been conclusively observed containing two heavy charm quarks and is a new frontier in understanding the strong force that binds quarks together.” [Newsweek]
On the 6th of July 2017, Dr Patrick Spradlin, a SUPA physicist from the University of Glasgow, announced the discovery of a new baryon, called the Ξcc++, at the European Physical Society High Energy Physics (EPS-HEP) Conference held in Venice (Italy). The analysis was carried out by SUPA physicists working on the LHCb experiment at CERN. The findings are published in Physical Review Letters.
On the 4th January 2017 a third gravitational wave signal (GW170104) was detected by both of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors further establishing the era of gravitational wave astronomy .
Friday 8 March, Linlithgow Burgh Halls, West Lothian
Taking place on International Women's Day, but this event is about so much more than women and gender. Come along to hear from people's lived experience, and explore the things we do well and the things we can improve on, in relation to gender, race, age, neurodiversity, and so much more.
Keynote: Dr Clara Barker, Materials Scientist at Oxford University and Inclusion & Diversity Representative for the IOP.
"Scattering Atoms, Ions and Perceptions"
Speaker: Prof Sonja Franke-Arnold, University of Glasgow
"Being a parent in academia"
This week, the LHCb experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider announced the discovery of five new resonances (very short-lived particles), known as excited Ωc (Omega_c) baryons. Baryons are composed of three fundamental particles called quarks. Well-known examples of baryons are the protons and neutrons that are found in atomic nuclei. A proton is made of two “up” quarks and one “down” quark, bound together via the strong nuclear force. The Ωc baryons are similar, but they are made from two “strange” quarks and one “charm” quark. These are like heavier (i.e., more massive) versions of the up and down quarks. The Ωc baryons do not exist inside atomic nuclei and can only be produced on earth in certain particle physics experiments such as the CERN Large Hadron Collider.
The “SUPAscopes” are three identical 1m robotic telescopes located at top observatory sites spread around the southern hemisphere: Siding Spring Observatory (Australia), South African Astronomical Observatory, and Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (Chile). Our capital investment has been turned into a share of the larger world-spanning LCO (Las Cumbres Observatory) network of 0.4m, 1m, and 2m telescopes, with a partnership agreement enabling collaborative projects with LCO and further network partners.
By providing round-the-clock access to the night sky, the LCO/SUPAscope network enables quasi-uninterrupted time series observations with both multi-filter imagers and spectrographs, and is the leading facility of its kind in the world. The automated scheduling of the telescopes allows for fast response via software interfaces.
Outstanding Academics, Celebrated Professionals and Royalty Join Scotland’s National Academy
The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is delighted to announce that HRH The Duke of Cambridge has been elected to become an RSE Royal Honorary Fellow. We much look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with HRH, as we have with our Patron, Her Majesty The Queen, and our other Royal Fellows.¹
Gregor Steele, Education Support (Physics), and Radiation Protection Adviser, gives some background on SSERC for SUPA; The school physics curriculum has changed quite radically in the last few years, with topics such as astrophysics, particle physics and quantum physics now much more to the fore. Some teachers will have last studied these subjects a decade or more ago, or perhaps not at all, depending on their route into teaching. RCUK courses bring teachers and researchers together with the aim of bringing cutting edge science into the classroom. These courses have been very well received in Scotland because the presenters have been able to talk about their research in an accessible manner that supports teachers’ understanding of curriculum content.
The SUPA Careers Event 2016 took place at Our Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh on 6th December. In keeping with the format used successfully in the past, we had a range of speakers from various industries who gave a brief introduction and then took part in round table sessions where delegates had the opportunity to chat with the speakers, ask questions, and get an insight into a variety of career options.
The SUPA careers event is designed to demonstrate the wide range of careers open to people with a physics PhD. The 80 student attendees heard from nine speakers who have careers in everything from satellites to software start-ups, including academia, finance, patent law and medical physics. Following brief introductions, the speakers spent 10 minutes with small groups of students to discuss their careers in detail before moving on to speak to other groups.
CV clinics were provided by Vishanti Fox of the Institute of Physics (IoP), and careers advisors Keith Kilgore (HW), Helen Stringer (UoE) and Katrina Garder (UoG).
An exhibition of Scottish Physics employers included representatives from M2 Lasers, Textesor, Leonardo, Coherent and the IoP.
In 2012 the Materials and Condensed Matter Physics Group opened the MagTEM facility at the University of Glasgow. MagTEM is a JEOL ARM (Atomic Resolution Microscope) 200cF which is a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) with aberration correction provided by CEOS. Aberration correction allows world leading performance of this instrument, and the capability of the instrument is summarised below:
University of Glasgow's LISA Pathfinder team has been awarded The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation and the British Interplanetary Society's 2016 Sir Arthur Clarke Award for "Space Achievement in Academic Research or Study".
The Welcome Event for new SUPA students was held on 28th October at Our Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh. First year students from across SUPA came to learn about the excellent research in SUPA, to meet colleagues in other universities and to receive advice from their peers.
Scottish-born scientists, David Thouless and Michael Kosterlitz, along with Duncan Haldane from London, have been awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in physics for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter. David, a Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, originates from Bearsden. Michael Kosterlitz, a physics professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island comes from Aberdeen. SUPA has extended congratulations to both.
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2016/