About the Project

Reconfigurable Hardware for Thermodynamic Computing

Federico's current research focuses on developing novel quantum devices for thermodynamic computing, an emerging computing paradigm that seeks to harness noise and thermal dissipation as computational resources to improve efficiency and enable new forms of information processing.

About the Project

MC PDF: Mapping the diversity of Type Ia supernovae explosions

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are powerful white dwarf explosions that astronomers use to measure the expansion of the universe. They’ve been essential in discovering dark energy, but not all of them behave the same way, with some “peculiar” ones showing unexpected brightness and evolution. The project aims to understand these unusual explosions by studying the galaxies they occur in and estimating how old their parent star systems are. Using data from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), it will build the largest consistent sample of these peculiar events and compare them to theoretical models of how white dwarfs explode. The goal is to map out the full diversity of these supernovae, figure out their origins, and help ensure that future surveys like the Vera Rubin, Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) can use only the most reliable ones for studying the universe.

About the Project

Understanding the Energy Pathways of Earth's Magnetosphere

Electronic devices are part of our everyday lives. They allow us to message each other, provide energy for our homes, and control critical systems like air traffic, but they are vulnerable. Space Weather describes how electric and magnetic fields change around Earth. Just like normal weather, there are storms in space and when a Space Weather "geomagnetic storm" happens, our electronic devices can be damaged so it is extremely important that we can predict when these storms will happen. Maria's fellowship aims to gain new insights into space weather events, specifically looking into how energy unloading occurs during geomagnetic storms, using a combination of data from spacecraft and ground-based observatories to understand the amount of energy that is put into the magnetosphere and how this changes over time.

About the Project

ECF: Towards Energy-efficient Nanodevices based on Quantum Interference (ENano)

The ENano project (Towards Energy-efficient Nanodevices based on Quantum Interference) aims to explore the use of individual molecules as functional components in electronic devices, particularly memristors. By leveraging quantum interference effects, the project seeks to design molecular-scale devices with tunable electrical properties, offering a potential pathway toward ultra-low-power computing technologies. This is especially relevant in the context of the rapidly increasing energy demands of artificial intelligence, where new device paradigms are needed to improve efficiency beyond conventional silicon-based electronics.

About the Project

Pushing the boundaries of superfluid vacuum and coherence

Samuli's EPSRC fellowship supports investigations of the interfaces between classical and quantum physics in superfluid 3He, aiming to answer questions such as “what does it feel like to touch a quantum fluid” and “can we melt a time crystal”. He is also working on a superfluid-based dark matter detector, laboratory simulations of phase transitions in the early universe, and neutron star superfluid and vortex dynamics.

About the Project

Leading the Next Generation of Data-Driven Discoveries

Professor Simmon's project focuses on the advancement of research across multiple disciplines, facilitated by combining human and algorithmic pattern detection techniques. In particular, it uses machine learning and citizen science to address fundamental challenges in both extragalactic astrophysics and humanitarian earth observation. Both fields use complex imaging and time-series data that is simultaneously abundant in volume and limited in wavelength and cadence. Both have time-sensitive requirements, such as "did this telescope just detect a supernova, a flickering black hole, or something completely new?" and "are these buildings and roads damaged from a recent earthquake, or is it something else?" Solving these challenges together can generate insights that would not be likely if each topic was studied in isolation.

About the Project

Quantum-Interference-Enhanced Thermolectric Materials

This research addresses the climate crisis by developing technologies to reclaim low-level waste heat from data centres, industry, and the human body. By exploiting room-temperature quantum effects, the project aims to design molecular-scale materials with a high dimensionless figure of merit (ZT). These materials will enable efficient, solid-state energy harvesting via the Seebeck effect and advanced on-chip Peltier-cooling for CMOS devices, providing a silent and sustainable alternative to traditional energy management.

About the Project

Graphene transistors for cryogenic electronics

The fellowship aimed to develop electronics using wafer-scale graphene. While the initial project was tailored towards conventional transistors, it soon developed towards superconducting devices, where graphene has shown incredible promise. The fellowship allowed Michael to develop international links, and he now leads a Lancaster team as part of an EU-funded collaboration developing superconducting graphene electronics for quantum computing.

About the Project

MSI: ERC:MesoPhone

Edward's ERC project studied some the smallest moving objects that can be fabricated – carbon nanotubes, which vibrate like tiny guitar strings. Because they are so small and so light, they are ideal for measuring tiny forces, such as those due to quantum tunnelling by electrons, or due to residual damping in superfluids. As well as being a fascinating way to study quantum effects in electronics, they may one day allow for new types of microscope. The project allowed Professor Laird to establish his lab in the low-temperature group.

About the Project

STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship: Understanding obscured star formation through cosmic time

A key difficulty in examining young galaxies in the distant Universe is that they can contain significant quantities of dust, making them faint and difficult or impossible to observe with optical and near-infrared telescopes. This project used far-infrared data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimetre Array (ALMA) to study the dust in distant submillimetre-selected galaxies (SMGs) and determine which galaxy evolution models are able to accurately reproduce their properties. The work focused on identifying and measuring the companions to SMGs using ALMA spectroscopy to pinpoint pairs of SMGs to probe the prevalence of major mergers as a trigger for the starbursts that typify SMGs. It also used narrowband near-IR imaging to measure their broader environments, as a probe of the likely descendants of SMGs and their potential as progenitors of local cluster galaxies.

About the Project

Superfluid 3He Far from Equilibrium

The Fellowship project titled “Superfluid 3He Far from Equilibrium” was aimed at investigating the reason behind unexpectedly fast superfluid flows in 3He. The Fellowship has allowed to build a strong team of physicists who managed to explain this mystery. The project has also allowed the creation of new, precise instruments enabling exploration of other physics phenomena far beyond what was envisaged initially in the proposal.

About the Project

STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship: Illuminating Solar-Planetary Interactions

This project investigated how the Sun affects the space environments of the planets Jupiter and Saturn by studying their aurora. The aurorae are nature’s light show: dancing displays of light near the planet’s northern and southern magnetic poles, caused by charged particles crashing into the atmosphere. Known as the northern and southern lights on Earth, these brilliant emissions have fascinated humans throughout history. The aurora reveals the transfer of energy from the Sun, through the stream of solar particles through the solar system, to the planet’s local environment. The aurora also reveals how the planet connects with its moons, such as Io and Ganymede at Jupiter, and Enceladus at Saturn. This project studied aurora at the outer planets in detail using two space missions: the Cassini Solstice Mission at Saturn and the Juno mission at Jupiter. These spacecraft flew low over their planet’s polar regions, simultaneously taking images of the aurora and measuring their presence in the magnetic field and the charged particles above the atmosphere.

RAS Research Fellowship: Planetary magnetospheres

This research programme aimed to discover the control that a planet’s magnetic field exerts on its magnetospheric dynamics, by probing the different environments of Jupiter and Saturn. It investigated magnetospheric processes driven internally by the planet’s magnetic field and its rotation, and those driven externally through the interaction with the surrounding solar wind. The balance between internally- and externally-driven dynamics concerns the fundamental transfer of energy and momentum through the solar system, from the Sun to planetary atmospheres. It is intrinsic to understanding our local space environment, and leads to discovery and understanding of planetary systems beyond our solar system. Observations of Jupiter show how changes in the inner plasma environment affect the dynamics of its vast magnetosphere and how these are reflected in the auroral emissions from the planet’s polar regions. In situ and remote sensing observations of Saturn’s magnetic field, plasma, and aurora indicate where and how much energy is transferred from the solar wind.

About the Project

Probing the mechanical properties of metal-coordinated molecules

This fellowship explored new ways to build and control molecular structures one bond at a time using advanced atomic-scale microscopy techniques. During this project, I explored methods for linking individual molecules together on insulating surfaces, a major challenge in nanotechnology that could help enable future nanoscale electronic devices and molecular circuits. Combining experimental physics and computational modelling, the project pushed the boundaries of single-molecule engineering and provided deeper understanding of chemical reactions at the level of individual atoms and bonds.

About the Project

GaSb quantum dots for a room-temperature light-matter interface

The original fellowship investigated semiconductor quantum dots: nanoscale structures that confine electrons and can behave like artificial atoms. The project focused on quantum dots made from gallium antimonide and explored how their interaction with light could be controlled at room temperature.

By developing new materials, devices and experimental techniques, the research sought to create practical interfaces between light and matter. Such interfaces are important for future quantum communication, sensing and information-processing technologies, which require reliable ways to generate, manipulate and detect quantum states.

Royal Society University Research Fellowship Extension: Imperfect quantum devices

Awarded as a new grant in 2017, the fellowship extension broadened the research focus from individual semiconductor light–matter interfaces to quantum devices whose microscopic imperfections could become useful features.

At extremely small scales, apparently identical devices contain natural atomic variations that cannot be precisely copied. The extension explored how this inherent randomness could be measured and harnessed to create unique, unclonable identities for physical objects. This work helped establish a new approach to hardware security based on quantum materials and provided foundations for technologies subsequently developed through Quantum Base, including authentication labels designed to protect products and supply chains from counterfeiting.

About the Project

A place in the Sun - Taking Solar System Science to the Public

This STFC Science in Society Fellowship focussed on communicating the direct relevance of research into the space environment to the public and policy-makers. For example, society is becoming increasingly reliant upon modern technologies for utilities, communication, commerce, entertainment and security, but many of these technologies are susceptible to the rapid changes and disturbances in the space environment often referred to as “space weather”. Events at the Sun, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, can result in disturbed space weather in the near-Earth space environment and potentially disruptive consequences for technologies on the ground and in space. Large disturbances, on the same scale as the enormous solar flare observed by English astronomer Richard Carrington in 1859, could have a massive impact on space- and ground-based technologies such as communications satellites and electricity distribution networks, with obvious economic consequences. Solar system research is also relevant to global climate change, the search for life in our solar system and the hunt for potentially life-sustaining exoplanets – clearly issues of huge societal and cultural importance. This fellowship enabled Prof Wild to build upon his previous outreach activities and engage with public audiences via innovative channels.

About the Project

Superfluid Helium-3: an Ideal System for Investigating Fundamental Physics

In the fellowship research, Rich showed that the quantum fluid behaviour of helium-3 could be used to simulate some of the fundamental physics of cosmological phase transitions in the early Universe shortly after the Big Bang.