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Congratulations to our three 2022 PhD Thesis Prize Winners.

Congratulations to our three 2022 thesis prize winners:

Springer Thesis Prize

Recognising outstanding PhD research - Arnau Brossa Gonzalo

Winton Thesis Prize

Recognising outstanding astrophysical research - Ben Cooke

Faculty of Science Thesis Prize (Physics)

Recognising outstanding research from across the faculty - Sam Holt

Our second year PhD students showcased their research in a poster session on the Physics concourse on Wednesday 18th May. PhD students are really the powerhouse of research in the department and it was great to hear all about the fantastic progress they are making. We awarded poster prizes to Luke Smith (1st place), Manisha Islam and John Pontin (joint runners up) for their particularly fascinating, clear and enthusiastic poster presentations. Many thanks to all who took part in the event.

In outreach & engagement news, a team of Physics staff led by Oksana Trushkevych (including Gavin Bell, Rachel Edwards, Tim Cunningham and Sue Burrows) presented 鈥淩esonate: a string, a concert hall, a universe鈥� for the on-campus Resonate festival, the culmination of the University's celebrations for Coventry City of Culture.

The word resonate was on everyone鈥檚 lips, but people did not really talk about resonance in the physics sense of the word (there are some pretty iffy technical definitions even in the most reputable online dictionaries!). So the team set out to correct this and prepared an interactive lecture-performance, drawing on their current research as well as their teaching on The Science of Music module for IATL. PhD students from the Ultrasound group helped to move equipment and instruments, such as theremin and laser harp, to the Arts Centre鈥檚 Studio Theatre, and Gentian Mouron-Adams (a Physics undergraduate) demonstrated the Rubens tube. We talked about bridges, earthquakes, musical instruments, concert halls, MRI, seeing resonance, seeing with resonance, using resonance to hear... Activities included 鈥渟inging鈥� with balloons, 鈥渇eeling鈥� a piece of original music by Gavin through balloons and a 鈥渄ecipher the message鈥� challenge relying on the natural reverberation of our teaching labs. We celebrated Delia Derbyshire, the electronic music pioneer from Coventry, who created the original Dr Who theme. We also talked about stars singing (actual stars, not celebs, and why we can鈥檛 hear them) and the universe being a set of resonances (well, if you are a string theorist). The event was aimed at children 8+ and received very positive feedback from attendees, young and grown up, who all made a lot of noise during and after the show.

Congratulations to Elizabeth Sharp who was awarded first prize for her presentation at the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) PhD seminar in Manchester on Tuesday 29^th March. Elizabeth's work focuses on using non-contact ultrasonic transducers to excite and then measure the resonant frequencies of metal containers that hold special nuclear materials, in order to measure changes internal pressure changes that can arise as a result of various chemical and nuclear reactions of the contents whilst the containers are in long term storage. There is a risk that in certain situations a build up of pressure in a container could cause the container to fail. Currently, the best approach that the industry have is to try and detect deformation of the cans by optical means, which can be difficult and is not particularly sensitive at early stages of pressurisation. Elizabeth has designed and manufactured sensors and developed instrumentation for performing measurements on these types of containers (filled with inert material to simulate the real content mass and density). She has performed a range of experiments and finite element simulations that confirm the characteristics of the detected resonant modes are she has shown how measuring changes in resonant mode behaviour can be used to obtain quantitative information on the internal pressure of the can. The NDA and Sellafield are interested in taking this technology further, with a view to deployment in nuclear material storage facilities in the longer term.