News

The School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh is delighted to welcome Lucinda Bruce-Gardyne, Founder of Genius Foods Ltd as our Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence.  For the next two years, Lucinda will spend one day a week helping physicists to think more broadly about the applications of their research,  to encourage entrepreneurial thinking and improve links to those in bus

Inspired by the ‘Harry Potter: A History of Magic’ festival organised by the British Library, we joined forces with the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Edinburgh Gin and Edinburgh Libraries to deliver some magical classes and demonstrations for muddles (non-gardening folk) at the Hogweed’s School of Botany & Magical Horticulture.

ECFP was delighted to open its doors to visitors last Saturday 23^rd September. Part of the Edinburgh-wide Doors Open Days event, ran annually by the Cockburn association, visitors were greeted at the level 2 of JCMB (where the ECFP is located) by a team of 13 PhD students and Post-Docs, who showcased the physics of complex fluids through a number of highly interactive activities, such as making slime, lava lamps, playing with a non-Newtonian fluid made of corn-starch and water, investigating the possibility of life on Mars, etc.

ECFP is excited to be partnering with the Scottish Rural College (SRUC) on a Global Challenges Research Fund BBSRC Foundation Award on Formulating Value Chains for African Orphan Crops.  ECFP will be exploring the physical properties of ingredients derived from African Orphan Crops and seeking functional performance criteria suitable for the manufacture of processed foods. 

Applications are invited for a Chancellor's Fellow in the School of Physics and Astronomy to work in industrially-relevant areas of science. This post will be in soft condensed matter research and its impact through the Edinburgh Complex Fluids Partnership, particularly in the rheology of soft materials and in applications of physics to food and personal care products. Search vacancy 036117 on the University of Edinburgh's jobs website.

Professor Cait MacPhee has been made a CBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours List. Cait’s award is given in recognition of her services to women in Physics. Cait is a Professor of Biological Physics, her research focusses on the behaviour of proteins; how they assemble and how that assembly can be controlled. Her recent work on the use of bacterial proteins to stabilise ice-cream has been widely reported.

On a particularly wet and windy Saturday students from the Condensed Matter Centre for Doctoral Training lead by soft matter researchers Katy Dickenson and Katherine Rumble journeyed to the Overgate Shopping Centre in Dundee with a stand displaying the complexities of phases of matter. The stand, organised and run by the students themselves, was set up in the upper mall as part of a larger event within Dundee Science Festival. Shoppers were captivated by the non-Newtonian properties of oobleck, a simple mixture of cornflour and water which can behave as both a solid and a liquid.

The Soft Matter and Functional Interfaces (SOFI) Centre of Doctoral Training is accepting applications for the 2015 cohort of PhD students before the 27th February 2015. This CDT is run between the Universities of Durham, Edinburgh and Leeds, see the SOFI CDT website for details.

Dr Tiffany Wood of the Edinburgh Complex Fluids Partnership has been awarded a Royal Society Industry Fellowship. She will be working with The Mentholatum Company, who make the iconic product DEEP HEAT, to help optimize their formulation and processes and to develop innovative formulations.