News

The CRST News Archive (11/2004 -- )

January 2011

We are pleased to announce that Brian Wecht has accepted a Lectureship position in the Centre for Research in String Theory.

October 2009

Prof MB Green FRS will take over from Stephen Hawking as the new Lucasian Professor at Cambridge (read here and here ). Green is a Visiting Professor at Queen Mary and his pioneering work in string theory was carried while he was at Queen Mary between 1978 and 1993.

Postdoc Valeria Gili is awarded an ImpactQM fellowship.

Previous postdocs Paul Heslop and Yusuke Kimura move to Durham University and Oviedo University, respectively.

Two new PhD students join us: Dimitrios Korres from Amsterdam, and Jurgis Pasukonis from MIT/Imperial

September 2009

Three new postdocs are joining the group - Gang Yang, Diego Rodriguez-Gomez and Vishnu Jejjala.

The conference Fundamental Physics UK: 2009 will be held from 6-7th November 2009 at Trinity College, Cambridge and is co-organised by David Berman from QMUL.

June 2009

DAVID EDWARD BIRTLES 1980 - 2009
It is with great sadness that we report the death of David Birtles, PhD student in the Centre, on 3rd June 2009. David joined us in October 2004, coming from Cambridge where he had obtained a Distinction in Part III. He was much appreciated for his inquiring mind, his gentle and friendly character and his kindliness and humour. After his studentship finished in November 2008, David moved back with his family in order to write up his thesis. He will be sadly missed by all his friends and colleagues here.

May 2009

Bill Spence has been awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship from September 2009.

February 2009

Two new PhD students will be joining us in October - Dimitrios Korres from Amsterdam, and Jurgis Pasukonis from MIT/Imperial.

January 2009

Three new postdocs will be joining us in October - Diego Rodriguez-Gomez from Princeton, funded by the EU, and Vishnu Jejjala from the IHES (Paris) and Gang Yang from the Institute for Theoretical Physics (Beijing), supported by the STFC.

Tom Brown has accepted a postdoctoral position at DESY from October 2009.

December 2008

The Centre has been awarded a Rolling Grant of £1,431,413 by the Science and Technology Facilities Council to fund research in string theory and its appllications over the period 2008-2013.

David Berman has been selected as a commenting author for a fast breaking paper by Science Watch.

November 2008

Sanjaye Ramgoolam has been awarded a Royal Society Networks Grant to host a visit by Prof Robert de Mello Koch from South Africa. Prof. Koch's six-week collaborative visit will take place in January-February 2009.

October 2008

Three new PhD students join us - Ilya Bakhmatov from Kazan, Russia, Will Black from Durham, and Gianni Tallarita from Cambridge.

September 2008

The conference Fundamental Physics UK: 2008 will be held from 7-8th November 2008 at Kings College London and is co-organised by David Berman from QMUL. This is the 2nd in a series of meetings of the UK string theory community launched in November 2007 with Fundamental Physics UK: 2007 .

May 2008

Valeria Gili has been awarded a third year of postdoctoral fellowship funding from the Foundation Boncompagni-Ludovisi, to November 2009, and George Georgiou has obtained funding for a further year of postdoctoral research to October 2009.

April 2008

We hosted Charapfest to celebrate the contributions to Physics of John Charap, on Friday April 11th 2008. Further details can be found here .

March 2008

Three new PhD students have accepted studentships to join us in October 2008 - Ilya Bakhmatov from Kazan, Russia, Will Black from Durham and Gianni Tallarita from Cambridge.

October 2007

Four new PhD students joined us - Panagiotis Katsaroumpas from Amsterdam, Daniel Koschade from Aaachen, Moritz McGarrie from Durham and David Turton from Cambridge.

August 2007

George Georgiou joined us from Durham as an Academic Visitor, and as an STFC Postdoctoral Fellow from November 2007.

Queen Mary researchers were on the organising committee for the programme Advancing Collider Physics: from Twistors to Monte Carlos (Organizers: A. Brandhuber, V.Del Duca, N. Glover, D. Kosower, G. Passarino, W.J. Spence, G. Travaglini and D. Zeppenfeld). This workshop was held from August 27 - October 26, 2007 at the Galileo Galilei Institute.

July 2007

Prof. Nastase visited the String Theory group from July 9-13. He gave a popular science talk for a general audience on July 10 (see flyer) and two pedagogical talks aimed at the PhD level on July 11 and 12.

May 2007

Valeria Gili has been awarded an additional year of postdoctoral fellowship funding from the Foundation Boncompagni-Ludovisi, to November 2008.

April 2007

A new postdoctoral researcher, Neil Copland, joins us from Cambridge.

March 2007

Our final year PhD students have accepted postdoctoral appointments from October 2007: John Ward at Victoria University Canada, and James Bedford will take up a three year PPARC Postdoctoral Fellowship at Imperial College London.

February 2007

EPSTAR Launch Week 12-16 February 2007
The EPSTAR (Experimental Particle, String Theory and Astronomy Research) Consortium was launched with a series of events in the week 12-16 February 2007. These included lectures addressed to a non-technical audience by Professor Sir Roger Penrose, Professor Peter Coles, Professor Michael Green and Professor Bryan Webber. The week's events also included specialised lectures on twistors by Professor Penrose, and a workshop on twistor string theory and its applications.

January 2007

Lilia Anguelova has obtained a postdoctoral position at Utrecht, Netherlands from September 1st 2007.

Costas Zoubos will be beginning a postdoctoral position at the Niels Bohr Institute, in Copenhagen, Denmark from October 1st 2007.

One of our grad students, Tom Brown, has launched a String Theory Wiki. It is meant as a central place for useful string theory resources, such as books and review papers.

November 2006

The String Theory Group at Queen Mary hosted a workshop on M-theory from November 9 - 11, 2006. For further information and links to talks please consult the workshop webpage: M-theory in the City

Valeria Gili , from the University of Pavia, Italy, joins us on a postdoctoral fellowship from the Foundation Boncompagni-Ludovisi.

October 2006

We started our new Graduate Program in String/Field Theory in October 2006. For more details and information on this years schedule consult the following webpage: Graduate Program in String/Field Theory

Two new postdoctoral researchers join us: Yusuke Kimura from Tokyo, funded by a JSPS Fellowship from Japan followed by a two year position supported by a PPARC Rolling Grant, and Paul Heslop from Cambridge, funded on a three year position by the EPSRC.

Three new PhD students join us - Vincenzo Calo (from Italy, funded by Queen Mary), Andrew Low (from Durham, funded by PPARC), and Daniel Thompson (from Imperial College, funded by PPARC).

Two of our 4th year PhD students, James Bedford and John Ward, have secured funding which will enable them to spend time at CERN during their final year.

August 2006

Dr Sanjaye Ramgoolamwas awarded an International Short Visits Grant by the Royal Society, to support the visit to Queen Mary during January/February 2007 of Dr. Nicolaos Toumbas from the University of Cyprus.

February 2006

Final year PhD student Costis Papageorgakis has accepted an offer of a postdoctoral position at the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research, Mumbai.

December 2005

Queen Mary researchers have been invited to be part of the organising committee for the programme Advancing Collider Physics: from Twistors to Monte Carlos (Organizers: A. Brandhuber, V.Del Duca, N. Glover, D. Kosower, G. Passarino, W.J. Spence, G. Travaglini and D. Zeppenfeld). This will be held from August 27th 2007 to October 26th 2007 at the new Galileo Galilei Institute in Arcetri, Florence. Further details are available here.

Dr Sanjaye Ramgoolam has been awarded a Royal Society Science Networks grant, to support the visit to Queen Mary during May/June 2006 of Prof. Robert de Mello Koch from University of Witswatersrand, South Africa.

November 2005

The Workshop From Twistors to Amplitudes was held at Queen Mary, which brought together 70 leading international researchers in this new field in order to review recent developments and promote new interactions and progress. All talks are available online

October 2005:

The new postdoc Kostas Zoubos arrives from the State University of New York (Stony Brook). He is funded on a two year position by a PPARC Special Programme Grant.

Four new PhD students join us - Tom Brown (from Cambridge, funded by PPARC), Adele Nasti (from Naples, funded by Queen Mary), Andrew Sellers (from Manchester, funded by PPARC) and Massimiliano Vincon (from Queen Mary, funded by Queen Mary).

September 2005:

Dr Andreas Brandhuber is awarded the Ludwig Boltzmann prize of the Austrian Physical Society (OePG)

The new postdoc Lilia Anguelova arrives from the University of Michigan, funded by our European Union Framework 6 TMR grant Superstrings. Her position is for two years.

July 2005:

A double EPSRC award is won by Gabriele Travaglini for the project Gauge Theory Amplitudes and String Theory in Twistor Space. This grant includes a five year EPSRC Advanced Fellowship, with in addition funding for a three year postdoctoral research assistant. Only three such awards were made in the UK in 2005 across the remit of the EPSRC.

June 2005:

Award of a new PPARC Rolling Grant String Theory, Gauge Theory and Gravity to the Queen Mary string theory group, supporting postdoctoral research, equipment and research travel from 2006-2010.

November 2004:

Award of PPARC Special Programme Grant Gauge Theory, String Theory and Twistor Space Techniques, to Prof WJ Spence and Dr A Brandhuber, to support a two-year postdoctoral researcher. Only four such awards were made in the UK in 2004 by PPARC.