Winners of 2024 Physics Award for Excellence Announced

Andrew Davies. Technical Support.

A key member of the mechanical workshop team, without Andrew's extensive knowledge the Department would be lost.

Urmimala Dey. Teaching

In the last academic year, Urmimala volunteered to teach the CMP postgraduate course, delivering lectures and hands-on sessions on Electronic Structure Theory.

Willem Elbers. Research – Astronomy

Dr Elbers has recently developed a fast new method to compute the evolution of neutrinos in cosmological simulations, now in widespread use by the simulations community. His latest work shows that cosmic neutrinos cause important systematic effects impacting measurements of dark  energy.

Yuber Perez-Gonzalez. Research – Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology

Yuber has made significant contributions in the detection of the cosmic neutrino background, supernova neutrinos, and Beyond Standard Model searches with a wide range of neutrino sources.

Carolyn Hammond. External Professional Support

For excellence in student support. Despite only arriving last summer, Carolyn's dedication and efficiency enabled her to come to terms quickly with the evolving student support structures within the University, while also forging links across the Colleges and support departments in order to provide appropriate support for our student population.

Anna Loughlin Administrative Support

Nominated for her exceptional support during the examination periods, including the in-year exams required as a result of the MAB. Anna is efficient, diligent, and responds positively when dealing with student and exam problems, despite the challenges which may occur.

Ben Nicholson. Research – Condensed Matter Physics

Ben Nicholson returned to Durham to work as a PDRA on an Impact Accelerator Account (IAA) project with an industrial partner. The challenge was to take some recently developed ideas and small-scale laboratory results and demonstrate to the commercial partner the technological potential of these synthetic materials as a new materials route for their applications.

Michelle Minns - Technical Support

Although based in L2 undergraduate teaching labs full-time since September 2023, Michelle has gone above and beyond during Michaelmas 2023 through to Easter Term 2024 to cover a long-term absence to ensure the L1 labs still functioned to the highest standards.

 Lorraine Oram. Commitment to Others

 Lorraine has been key to the success of a recent Ukraine Summer Camp. From the outset, she was a fundamental part of the planning, organising and success of the event ALWAYS going above and beyond to ensure every aspect of the camp was geared to the welfare and happiness of the children (who had been directly affected by the conflict in their home country) attending.

Dan Ruttley. Research – Quantum Light and Matter

For world-leading high-impact developments using individual ultracold polar molecules in optical tweezers including rearrangement to form defect-free arrays, simultaneous multi-state readout, record coherence times for rotational superpositions in magic-wavelength tweezers and the highest fidelity quantum entanglement of pairs of molecules reported to date.

Amy Smith. Advancing the EDI Agenda

Amy has been steadfastly championing EDI within CMP. She identified the need for an EDI forum within the section and, since establishing this herself, has been leading it diligently and effectively.

Vanessa Ward. Commitment to Others

Vanessa has brought fresh ideas and boundless energy to CMP - from organising a successful away day focusing on career development, to establishing a major new primary school outreach programme.