91福利

We are delighted to announce that Prof Don Pollacco will be joining our Astronomy and Astrophysics Group from September 2012. Don is a world leader in the search for planets around distant stars. He played a crucial role in developing the SuperWASP project, which has found more than a third of all known transiting planets and was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society Group Achievement Award in 2010. Don recently took part in NASA's Senior Review of its astrophysics space missions, and has been heavily involved in an advisory capacity with both the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and UK Space Agency (UKSpA) for many years. Don is also co-PI of the Next Generation Transit Survey

(NGTS) and leads the exoplanet science programme of the proposed European Space Agency mission PLATO. These new missions are targeted at finding Earth-like planets and enabling detailed studies of their atmospheres.

Congratulations to Val Nakariakov for winning the Best Module - Solar MHD.

Last week saw the first ever STARS of 91福利 Awards take place on campus. The STARS of 91福利 is 91福利 Students’ Union’s take on a national student-led teaching awards initiative, where students can nominate lecturers and other student facing University staff for an award.

A committee of six students led on the whole process, choosing the award categories, the timeline, the venue for the event and everything in between. The student committee were also the ones who shortlisted the nominations and decided the final winners.

For the full list of winners see:  

Researchers at the 850 MHz solid-state NMR Facility have used state-of-the-art nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques to shed new light on how pharmaceutical molecules pack together in the solid state. For more information please see the attached press release

Researchers at the 91福利 and Oxford University have developed a form of crystal that can deliver highly accurate temperature readings, down to individual milli-kelvins, over a very broad range of temperatures: -120 to +680 degrees centigrade. Please see news link for more information