SEPnet

SEPnet |Royal Holloway is one of the six university partners which, in collaboration with the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, together make up the South East Physics Network (SEPnet) consortium. SEPnet was initiated to promote Physics in the South East of the UK and is supported by a large grant from HEFCE. The six partner universities (Royal Holloway, Kent, Queen Mary, Southampton, Surrey and Sussex) have undertaken to work together to advance and sustain Physics as a strategically important subject for the UK economy and its science base in the south east region. The benefits that SEPnet membership brings to Royal Holloway students include the following: -

• An Employer Engagement programme which offers undergraduates the opportunity to be employed on summer work projects as part of either academic or industrial placements aimed, in part, to enhance career prospects after graduation.
• A new two year postgraduate Masters level degree (Euromasters) which includes both a taught and a research component. Students have the option to change location in their second year to a SEPnet partner university or a research institution which may include CERN, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Diamond, ISIS or NPL.
• Provision of a new fully equipped video conferencing facility enabling students to access teaching provided by other SEPnet members and Colleges of the University of London. It also supports collaborative links between the SEPnet members and funding for four main research themes ie Condensed Matter, Particle Physics, Astrophysics, and Radiation Detectors and Instrumentation.
• Funding for the appointment of two permanent Fellowships/Lectureships in High Energy Particle Physics Phenomenology and two Fellowships/Lectureships in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics

Outreach: With our SEPnet partners we run a coordinated programme of outreach activities across the region, to support the teaching of Physics in schools, and to convey the excitement of our subject to the next generation. Our involvement with these activities together with the Department’s own outreach programme are lead by our dedicated outreach officer.

Research: SEPnet has initiated several exciting new research collaborations. As a result we have established a strong and wide-ranging effort in Theoretical Physics in our Department.

• The NeXT Institute for Particle Phenomenology is established as a collaboration between, Particle Physics Division (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory), Royal Holloway University of London, University of Southampton, University of Sussex. NeXT promotes a new kind of interaction between experimental and particle physicists to enable rapid and accurate interpretation of the anticipated stream of data from LHC. This data will point the way to a higher level of understanding of the fundamental interactions of matter and forces as well as possibly paving the way to follow towards an underlying grand unified theory. Two theorists have been appointed at Royal Holloway University of London, where they are embedded in the experimental particle physics group, and interact with the theory groups elsewhere in the collaboration.,
• The Hubbard Theory Centre has been established by RHUL in partnership with the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, and in association with the University of London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN). It will involve experimentalists and theorists working closely in tandem on the discovery and design of new materials, in which new quantum states with striking properties emerge from the collective behaviour of strongly interacting electrons. The Hubbard Theory Centre is led by Professor Piers Coleman (Rutgers University and RHUL) and Prof Jörg Schmalian (US Department of Energy Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University and RHUL). Dr Matthias Eschrig (formerly at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) and Dr Claudio Castelnovo (formerly at University of Oxford) have been appointed to academic positions held jointly at RHUL and ISIS.