Blackett Reception for leavers and winners

A celebratory reception was held on the 9th July to honour recent award winners and those leaving the department

A sparkling reception was held on the 9th July in the Blackett Common room to celebrate our leavers and many award winners. Russell Cowburn, also an award winner and FRS, will be leaving us to head up a team at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge after five years in Exss. 

Paul Nandra who was head of Astrophysics, will take up a directorship at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany. He has been at Imperial since 2002 and is now a Visiting Professor. Costas Foudas who spent ten years in Hep was absent from the proceedings. He recently returned to Greece where he has been appointed head of the High Energy Physics Group at the University of Ioannina. There were speeches of appreciation and farewell made by Lesley Cohen and Steve Warren as well as a toast by HoD Jo Haigh. Congratulations went to the recent numerous award and prize winners . Prominent amongst the winners were Tom Kibble, Donal Bradley, Peter Knight, Russell Cowburn , John Pendry, Stefan Maier, Jenny Nelson, Peter Haynes and Jim Virdee.

The FoNS and Rector's Awards winners were also celebrated as well as Linda Jones' 2009 Imperial College Associateship, Brian Willey's Rector's award for Excellence Award in Health and Safety and Trevor Beek for Excellence in Supporting Science.

 Leavers

Russell Cowburn and Paul Nandra. Both will be present and both HoGs have agreed to give a brief speech
College Awards
Associateship of Imperial College - Linda Jones - leading administrator in the Faculty of Natural Sciences
Fellowship of Imperial College - Tom Kibble - a renowned scientist whose relationship with Imperial College London has spanned 50 years, during which time he has made enormous contributions to both the field of particle physics and to the life of Imperial.

Rector's Awards
Rector's Award for Excellence in Health and Safety - Brian Willey, who unfortunately can't be here but I am assured is enjoying himself and other Physics colleagues sailing round the Solent. Brian has been instrumental in ensuring correct compliance with H and S regulations with laser safety. A job he continues to carry out in an exemplary fashion and this award is well deserved
Rector's Awards for Excellence in Teaching
Paul Dauncey 2009
Peter Torok 2010
Richard Thompson - Teaching Fellow
Rector's award for Excellence in Research Supervision
Ned Ekins-Daukes
Rector's Awards for Excellence in Passtoral Care (2009)
Arash Mostofi
Faculty of Natural Sciences Awards for Excellence in Teaching
Academic staff:
Gavin Davies
Kim Christensen
Dan Waldram
Awards for GTAs/PDRAs/Technical staff/Teaching Support Staff/teaching technologists
Karl Sandeman for excellence in academic tutoring
Richard Hendricks for excellence in laboratory demonstrating
Markus Horn for excellence in laboratory demonstrating
Omega Mekareeya for excellence in rapid feedback demonstrating
Lee Parker for excellence in teaching support
Stuart Mangles for excellence in academic tutoring
IoP Prizes 2009
Four researchers the department were honoured in the Institute of Physics' annual awards last year - more than at any other UK university. This is an excellent recognition of our strengths.
The 2009 Faraday Medal, one of the Institute's three gold medals and awarded for outstanding contributions to experimental physics, was awarded to Donal Bradley for his pioneering work in the field of plastic electronics. This award is just one of a succession of prestigious prizes given Donal - more of which later. Unfortunately, Donal cannot be here this evening - congratulations though for his many achievements.
The Glazebrook Medal of the Institute and another of the Institute of Physics' gold medals was awarded to Peter Knight for his outstanding contributions to physics in the UK and globally, through both his scholarship as a pre-eminent atomic and molecular optics theoretician and as a charismatic and effective leader of research and research organisations.

The Institute's Joule Medal was awarded to Imperial's Jenny Nelson in recognition of her distinguished research in applied physics. Director of Imperial's Doctoral Training Centre in the Science and Application of Plastic Electronic Materials Jenny's research focuses on a range of novel photovoltaic materials.
The Chadwick Medal for distinguished research in particle physics was awarded to Jim our lead scientist on the CMS detector experiment, one of four particle detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator. Jim, of course, has played a crucial role in all phases of CMS since its formation in 1992.
IoP Prizes 2010
Dr Peter Haynes <http://www.iop.org/about/awards/career/maxwell/medallists/page_43969.html> (Condensed Matter Theory and the Departmental of Materials) was awarded the Maxwell Medal and Prize for his work on linear-scaling methods for large-scale first-principles simulation of materials based on density-functional theory, in particular his leading role in the development of the ONETEP code used in both academe and industry.

Professor Stefan Maier <http://www.iop.org/about/awards/career/paterson/medallists/page_43976.html> (EXSS) was awarded the Paterson Medal and Prize in recognition of his important contributions to the fields of plasmonics and plasmonic metamaterials.

In addition Professor Peter Roberts, a Visiting Professor with the Plasma Physics Group and Institute of Shock Physics, has won the Glazebrook Medal for his leadership in the design, physics and safety of nuclear weapons.

More prizes
Royal Society Royal Medal has been awarded to Peter Knight for his pioneering research and international leadership in the field of quantum optics and quantum information science,

Royal Society Hauksbee Awards - awarded to Trevor Beek for excellence in supporting science

Bakerian Lecture - Donal Bradley was selected to deliver The Royal Society's premier lecturer in the physical sciences - The Bakerian Lecture - in March 2010.

CBE - Donal Bradley was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) was awarded the 2010 New Year's Honours for services to science.
Faraday Medal - Donal Bradley has been awarded the 2010 Farad ay Medal of the Institution of Engineering and Technology
Tom Kibble - was awarded the Americal Physics Society 2010 Sakurai Prize for theoretical Pa rticle Physics. The Prize was established to recognize and encourage outstanding achievement in particle theory. It was awarded at a special ceremony in Washington DC in February 2010 and the citation that will appear on the certificate reads as follows:

"For elucidation of the properties of spontaneous symmetry breaking in
four-dimensional relativistic gauge theory and of the mechanism for the
consistent generation of vector boson masses."


The 2010 Sackler Prize was awarded to Stefan Maier (EXSS) This is an international prize in physics or chemistry for young scientists, administered by Tel Aviv University. This year it was for scientists working in the field of nano-photonics
and nano-plasmonics. Stefan collected the $25,000 prize at a special ceremony in Israel in May.

The UNESCO 2009 Neils Bohr Gold Medal has been awarded to John Pendry. This prestigious award is made annually by the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen for outstanding contributions to Physics and John will receive it at a ceremony in Denmark in September for his "ground-breaking contributions to meta-materials".

FRS - Russell Cowburn has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society