Fellowship success for Physical Sciences and Engineering

Academic and research staff in Physical Sciences and Engineering (FPSE) have shown they are at the forefront of their research fields by securing nearly £10m of funding for fellowships in just one year.

The fellowships have been spread across the three academic units in FPSE – Electronics and Computer Science; Optoelectronics; and Physics and Astronomy – with the aim to create future research leaders as well as support established research leaders.

FPSE Associate Dean Research, Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, said: “A key component of the faculty research strategy is to diversify research income and to build new and increased research capabilities across the faculty and in relevant areas with significant impact on scientific advances, economy and society. Increasing the number of academics and early career researchers with prestigious fellowships clearly helps to realise this strategy.

“Securing so many fellowships is a reflection of the outstanding quality of our academics and researchers and the relevance of the problems their research is addressing,” he added.

In early 2011, FPSE set up a Future Academic and Research Leaders Mentoring Network chaired by Bashir that identifies academic and research staff who have the greatest potential to secure fellowships.

The network works closely with candidates across the whole cycle from proposal preparation, faculty financial support, to submission and preparing them for interview.

The winners of the fellowships are:

Electronics and Computer Science Lajos Hanzo who gained a European Research Councils’ Advanced Investigator Grant of €2,012,003 to investigate Radio-Frequency to Giga-Bit Optical and Quantum Wireless.

Hywel Morgan who gained a Royal Society Industry Fellowship of £187,580 to research Low cost consumer electronics for 21st Century healthcare.

Optoelectronics James Wilkinson who gained a European Research Councils’ Advanced Investigator Grant of €3,062,006 to explore Wideband Integrated Photonics for Accessible Biomedical Diagnostics.

Radan Slavik who gained an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Early Career Researcher grant of £948,809 to explore Overcoming Capacity and Energy Limits in Optimal Communications.

Physics and Astronomy Anna Scaife who gained a LODESTONE fellowship of €1,928,369 for Unifying the radio spectrum to map the magnetic universe.

Otto Muskens who gained an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Early Career Researcher grant of £1,071,379 to develop Complex nanophotonic and plasmonic networks for ultrafast optical devices.

Keith Wilcox who gained an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Early Career Researcher grant of £597,061 to develop a novel tuneable space frequency comb.

Alexey Kavokin who gained an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Established Career grant of £1,218,053 for research into Plaritonics for quantum technology applications.