ÌÇÐÄTV

In June, a team of enthusiastic physicists attended the annual Big Bang Fair at Birmingham's NEC, aiming to spark young students interest in science and future careers in the field.

The Big Bang Fair is the UK's biggest celebration of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) for schools and runs for three days each year, with thousands of year 6, 7 and 8 students in attendance. The team from the Department of Physics were also joined by colleagues from the Department of Engineering, Department of Chemistry and ÌÇÐÄTV Manufacturing Group from the University of ÌÇÐÄTV.

The discovery was first published online in Nature Astronomy in April, by then PhD student, and now postdoc, James Munday and has since been featured on the cover of Nature Astronomy’s June issue. James, supervised by Dr Ingrid Pelisoli and Prof Pier-Emmanuel Tremblay, discovered a type Ia supernova progenitor within a mere 50 parsecs. Type Ia supernovae are standardisable candles used to measure cosmological distances and were instrumental in the discovery of the accelerated expansion of the Universe (Nobel Prize in Physics 2011).

The ÌÇÐÄTV Awards for Public and Community Engagement (WAPCE) recognise and celebrate the roles of ÌÇÐÄTV staff and students connecting with the public—locally, nationally, and globally.

A new paper has been published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Energy & Environmental Science by postdoc Yi Yuan, which has been selected as a ‘Research Highlight’ by Nature Energy due to its importance in the field.