Five UCL academics receive prestigious physics prizes

Clockwise from top left: Faria, Dr Li, Bayvel, Hutton, Prinja - Five UCL academics have been awarded prizes and medals from the Institute of Physics in recognition of their outstanding contributions to physics and public engagement. Professor Polina Bayvel (UCL Electronic & Electrical Engineering) was awarded the 2021 Thomas Young Medal and Prize for distinguished contributions to the field of optical communications. Professor Bayvel is Head of the Optical Networks Group at UCL, which she set up in 1994, and has been at the forefront of developing optical fibre networks that transport vast quantities of data around the world. Professor Bayvel has made fundamental contributions to the physics and design of advanced high-bandwidth, multi-wavelength optical communications systems, achieving new world records in data transmission speeds over short and long distances. Professor Carla Figueira De Morisson Faria (UCL Physics & Astronomy) was awarded the 2021 Joseph Thomson Medal and Prize for her distinguished contributions to the theory of strong-field laser-matter interactions - that is, looking at how matter interacts with extremely strong lasers over a period of attoseconds (one quintillionth of a second). As the award citation noted, Professor Faria has broken new ground as a world-leading physicist in the field. Her development of semi-analytical models, which brought together attoscience and mathematical physics, have provided vital tools to the physics community, while students she has supervised have won around 20 local, national and international prizes.