We had a fantastic time scything the physics meadow last Saturday with our scything tutor Danny. As both an experienced scyther and conservationist, he was able to advise us on both the meadow management to promote diversity and the technique of scything! The department kindly supported this eco-venture by paying half of the course fee, for which we are extremely grateful.

The man whose father was one of the first to set foot on the moon visited Durham city and the department on Monday. Dr Andy Aldrin is Director of the Aldrin Space Institute and president of the non-profit foundation dedicated to inspiring children’s passions for STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths).

Researchers in the Quantum light and matter group led by Prof. Simon Cornish have demonstrated robust quantum storage with ultracold RbCs molecules in recent work published in Nature Physics.

Experts in the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology within the Department of Physics have developed a new model for simulating epidemics – and it’s already being used to inform the UK’s response to COVID-19.

The annual Physics Department Awards for Excellence took place at 2pm on Tuesday 14 September. Held virtually on Zoom this year, there were a series of science talks aimed at all members of the department, followed by the presentation of awards. The awards recognise staff who carry out exceptional work, and go that extra mile.

We are excited to announce a new collaboration in the field of quantum computing! Working with Dunnhumby, a global leader in customer data science, this project will fund a postgraduate student to work with Dr Nicholas Chancellor within the Quantum, Light & Matter (QLM) group to explore the potential of nascent quantum technology in solving hard real-world data-science problems.

Durham is a hub for research excellence and our academics prove that year in and year out through their ground-breaking research. We are delighted that Dr Sownak Bose, from the Department of Physics, has been awarded the Future Leaders Fellowship for his research project into Fundamental Cosmology.

Two Postgraduate students in the Condensed Matter Physics research group, Max Birch and Luke Turnbull, were recently were awarded postgraduate prizes by the Departmental Postgraduate Committee.

Our astronomers are part of an international team that has taken another step towards solving the puzzle of what dark matter might be made of.

A team led by Prof. Frank Krauss and including Prof. Richard Bower and 8 of our Ph.D. students from the Centre for Doctoral Training in Data-Intensive Science (CDT) have created a simulation in the form of an agent-based model, which describes the spread of an epidemic such as COVID-19 through a virtual population.

You might not think that studying the universe could benefit research into serious illnesses like cancer, but Durham’s astronomers have joined forces with cancer researchers to improve the diagnosis and treatment of patients.

Many possible spintronic applications of skyrmions involve their motion along pre-determined race tracks. Skyrmions can be moved with much lower energy than ferromagnetic domain walls, but there is a problem. Among the many unusual properties of skyrmions is the tendency of their direction of motion to deviate from that of a driving force; the angle by which they diverge is known as the skyrmion Hall angle and is a result of the topology giving rise to a Magnus force in its equation of motion.