Nottingham hosts the IOP’s Celebration of Physics 2025

The Institute of Physics’s (IOP) annual showcase visited Nottingham Trent University last week for a day of scientific collaboration and inspiration.

Members of the IOP from across the UK and Ireland descended on the city to take part in the Celebration of Physics and celebrate 2024’s IOP Award winners.

The day, hosted at Nottingham Trent’s city centre Newton building, heard speeches from the IOP’s group chief executive, Tom Grinyer, who highlighted the challenges of the year ahead, and IOP Vice-President for Science and Innovation, Professor Tara Shears, who spoke about the growing role of AI in physics.

There were also fascinating talks from Nottingham Trent’s Rob Morris, who talked about his work on food scanners, and from Dr Niall Holmes of the University of Nottingham and Cerca Magnetics Ltd, who gave personal insight into wearable magnetoencephalography (MEG) scanners, which are transforming the way the human brain is investigated and understood.

Isaac Newton medal winner, Sir Richard Friend, from the University of Cambridge, gave a lecture describing his work with organic electronics.

_{Image credit: Matthew Jones Photography}

Physics World hosted an interview with Professor Nicolas Stone, who demonstrated his ‘smart needle probe’ designed to diagnose lymphomas in the body using the phenomena of Raman scattering.

And the day was wrapped up with an evening event, which saw the IOP’s 2024 Award winners receive their trophies.

Commenting afterwards, Tom Grinyer said: “I want to thank everyone who joined us for the Celebration of Physics – I know it takes a lot of effort to bring so many busy scientists together and it has been great to see so many people sharing their thoughts and work and inspiring each other.

“The Celebration has been a great success and reminded us all, as if it were needed, of the amazing work going on across the world of physics.”

_{Image credit: Matthew Jones Photography}