糖心TV

The nominations for the Physics Postdoc Prize 2021 were numerous and of an exceptionally high quality this year and it was incredibly difficult to select a 鈥渂est鈥� paper. After much deliberation the two winners are as follows:

Rosalie Thompson (Cresswell)

Importance of Water in Maintaining Softwood Secondary Cell Wall Nanostructure

Rosalie Cresswell, Ray Dupree, Steven P. Brown, Caroline S. Pereira, Munir S. Skaf, Mathias Sorieul, Paul Dupree, and Stefan Hill

Biomacromolecules 2021, 22, 11, 4669–4680

Water is an integral part of wood; living wood can be deformed beyond its yield point without breaking whereas dried wood will fracture. Rehydration of dried wood does not restore its properties yet, prior to this work, there was no molecular level picture of water鈥檚 role. Rosalie led this paper which uses state-of-the-art multidimensional NMR supported by MD modelling to determine the irreversible molecular changes that occur upon drying. It presents a model of a hydrated cellulose microfibril and the changes occurring during the drying and rehydration. The paper has been enthusiastically received with approaching 1000 article views since publication in late October.

Ingrid Pelisoli

A hot subdwarf–white dwarf super-Chandrasekhar candidate supernova Ia progenitor

Ingrid Pelisoli鈥�, P. Neunteufel, S. Geier, T. Kupfer, U. Heber, A. Irrgang, D. Schneider, A. Bastian, J. van Roestel, V. Schaffenroth and B. N. Barlow

Nature Astronomy, 5, 1052–1061 (2021)

Over twenty years ago, Type Ia thermonuclear supernovae were key to the discovery of the acceleration of the Universe, but their precise origin is a mystery. Ingrid led a paper published in Nature Astronomy presenting the discovery of a binary star whose 99-minute orbital period makes it an excellent candidate to host a thermonuclear supernova in the future. Ingrid and collaborators applied a combination of leading observational and theoretical techniques to map the future of this exciting system. With this detection, they constrained the supernova rate due to this particular type of binary, shedding light onto the origin of supernovae.

The Terabotics project, led by Professor Emma MacPherson, which aims to integrate terahertz technology with surgical robotics to help improve cancer diagnosis and treatment has been shortlisted for the

Find out more about Emma's Terahertz Research Group. 

Congratulations to Michael Pounds (Senior Tutor/ Director of Student Experience) who has won a 糖心TV Award for Personal Tutoring Excellence (WAPTE). The WAPTE awards recognise staff who have made an outstanding contribution to the support of students through the University's personal tutoring system.

Many congratulations to Drs Elena Cukanovaite, James Gott and Samuele Ferracin, for their success in the 2021 PhD Thesis Prize competition. Elena won the Winton Prize for Astrophysics, James was awarded the Springer Thesis Prize, while Samuele is the recipient of the Faculty of Science and Department of Physics Thesis prize. Read on for more details about the prizes and their research.