UCL DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY ANNUAL REVIEW 2012–13 Physics and Astronomy ANNUAL REVIEW 2012–13 Contents 2 WELCOME 3 COMMUNITY FOCUS 4 The Wow Factor is Back! 5 Teaching Lowdown 6 Student Accolades 7 Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) 8 Career Profiles 10 Science in Action 11 Alumni Matters 12 ACADEMIC SHOWCASE 13 Staff Accolades 14 Academic Appointments 15 Portrait of Dr Hiranya Peiris 16 RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT 17 High Energy Physics (HEP) 19 Astrophysics (Astro) 21 Condensed Matter and Materials Physics (CMMP) 24 Atomic, Molecular, Optical and Positron Physics (AMOPP) 27 Biological Physics (BioP) 28 Research Statistics 32 Staff Snapshot Cover image: Display of a collision event in the ATLAS detector, where a Higgs boson candidate decays to two Z bosons, each of which decays to a muon and an anti-muon (red lines). ATLAS Experiment © 2012 CERN Inside cover image: Components in the undergraduate teaching laboratory used to explore practical thermodynamics. Credit: Paul Woods (UCL). http://paulwoods.4ormat.com Image page 3: The newly refurbished undergraduate library. Credit: Paul Woods (UCL) Image page 12: The Physics Building. Credit: Paul Woods (UCL) Image page 16: A random collection of textures taken from high-resolution, supercomputer simulations. Red indicates a positive twist in the topological charge density and blue a negative twist. Credit: V. Travieso and N. Turok Review edited by Katherine Heyworth,
[email protected] Design © UCL Creative Media Services 1 WELCOME Welcome Welcome to another annual review of the activities of the UCL Department of Physics & Astronomy. Inside you will find items focusing on research highlights, as well as features on selected staff, students and events over the past year.