神马福利影片

The finances for 2010/11 have now been released. it was a good year for physics. The headline results are:

Our research awards reached £7.5m for 2010/11 financial year. That is a respectable amount, comfortably above the last two years. It meets our target of exceeding £7m, but lest people feel complacent the target for the new financial year is £8m.

It is all the more remarkable because it excludes MPAGS (not yet signed) and iMR DTC (£1.9m which is technically classed as teaching) nor does it include major equipment only grants like AM1 etc.

This averages £150k per academic per year of new awards, and that is an average over all staff, including theory and office based academics.  If we maintain that level, then each staff member would accumulate a portfolio of c£450k. The main target is based on the research income that we get each year from our portfolio of grants, including deferred capital grants, those figures should be available in about 4 weeks time.

Over 40% of the total academic staff salary bill is funded direct from grants through a combination of fellowships and PI time.

July Awards

The new awards in July form an impressive and diverse list.

• Top by far is the Nanosilicon Programme grant at £1.85m headed by David Leadley
• Marzena Szymanska is awarded £400k from EPSRC for Novel Superfluid Phenomena in Semiconductor Microcavities. Which adds to an increasingly impressive portfolio in the theory group.
• Jon Duffy brings in a welcome £150k from EPSRC for Fermiology and spin densities from x-ray scattering
• Mark Newton £110k also from EPSRC for CHIST-ERA: Quantum Information with NV Centres.
• Sandra Chapman has tapped into EU funds to the tune of £80k for Turboplasmas
• STFC have funded an outreach programme to purchase and run a mobile planetarium led by Peter Wheatley but involving staff throughout the department. £10k This adds another string to an impressive and professional outreach programme.
• And Julie Staunton has industrial funding for a studentship modelling the electrocalorific effect. £27k

Volker Keinhorst, a PhD student in the microscopy group, will become the first Warwick postgraduate to take up an industrial placement within the Midlands Physics Alliance Graduate School (MPAGS) scheme when he starts work in Banbury with Paintbox UK Ltd at the end of July. The aim of the placement will be to help Paintbox develop their automobile painting process including micro analysis via FIB SEM studies of paint/substrate interfaces.

This placement was made possible through the industrial contacts of the Science City Research Alliance. More information about the MPAGS Industrial Placements is available and any students interested in taking part in this scheme should contact David Leadley.