News

Young Durham physicist’s work on new magnets wins Medal

(14 April 2003)

Dr Russell Cowburn of the Durham University Physics Department has been hailed as one of the UK’s top younger scientists with the award of the 2003 Westminster Medal.

The medal and £500 prize is awarded at the annual Science Week reception at the House of Commons that features displays of research work by over 150 of Britain’s leading younger scientists, engineers and technologists. Dr Cowburn was recently promoted by Durham University to the academic grade of Reader in Physics (only one step away from Professor) at the unusually early age of 31.

His work in the emerging field of nanotechnology – extremely small-scale applications – has already drawn wide international attention, particularly for his work with nano-magnets and “spintronics”, which uses the magnetic spin features of atoms in new forms of electronics and computing operations.

His display for the highly competitive Westminster Awards showed his research group’s work on very small magnets for novel use in mobile phones and laptop computers, and as high security tags in passports, credit cards and other applications.

Durham’s Vice-Chancellor, Sir Kenneth Calman, said: “Dr Cowburn has earned the all-round congratulations of his colleagues. We are very proud of his achievement and wish him continued success in his research. It’s a cutting-edge technology that promises some very exciting developments in the future.”

The Westminster Medal and other prizes are sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The fifth Annual Reception at Parliament was organised by British scientist Dr Eric Wharton of SET for BRITAIN in association with GlaxoSmithKline and Robert Jackson, MP for Wantage and former minister.

Entries included airborne biological weapon detection, single molecule work, new drug delivery systems, wild plant harvesting, stem cell research, three-dimensional imaging of pigs and mysteries of the moon.

The Awards were presented by Dr Mike Owen, Senior Vice-President Technology Development of GSK R&D who stressed the importance of researchers being aware of what was going on in other areas than just their own, and of the need to communicate effectively not only with their peers but also with other audiences particularly those such as MPs, the general public and the young.

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Further information: Dr Russell Cowburn, Dept of Physics, University of Durham 0191 334 3598, www.durham.ac.uk/r.p.cowburn
Claire West, PR Office, University of Durham 0191 334 6074

Abstracts of the display posters : www.setforeurope.org