The Stars Shone in Holmbury St Mary

These annual awards highlight outstanding scientific achievement for both researchers and students, commitment to our technology programme and commitment to outreach. Each of these awards is named in memory of a late staff member who embodied the commitment to these areas and every year, members of their families are invited to the laboratory to present the awards and to share memories. The Director also presents the self-explanatory “Director’s Teaching Award” and the “Director’s Award” which highlights outstanding contributions in other areas.

This year, the Alan Johnstone Award for outstanding scientific achievement by a PhD student went to Sachin Reddy for his work across a wide range of subtopics regarding the ionosphere. These included Particle in Cell (PIC) simulations of electrostatic charging of CubeSats and of icy moon surfaces; the first analysis of low Earth orbit data from the MSSL Ion Neutral Mass Spectometer; and the development of two machine-learning forcasting models for forecasting ionospheric equatorial plasma bubbles as observed by the ESA Swarm mission and plasma upwelling determined from GPS measurements of the ionosphere.

The Robert Boyd Award for outstanding scientific achievement by an early career researcher was presented to Dr Ed Bryant who studies the occurrence of planets orbiting low-mass stars. Ed has discovered that giant planets (~Jupiter sized) can exist around low-mass stars (smaller than about 40% in size of the Sun). He did this using data from the NASA TESS satellite to search for such planets, validate potential signals, and estimate how many planets his search missed. In doing so, he found for the first time that low-mass stars can indeed host such giant planets, and quantified their occurrence rate. His finding was highly unexpected, as the available planet formation models suggested that the amount of mass available around low-mass stars would be insufficient to form such large planets, so that such planets should not exist at all. His work therefore garnered significant attention and is likely to influence planet formation research for years to come.

The John Raymont Award for commitment to the MSSL technology programme was awarded to Duncan Rust, acknowledging his dedication to quality and getting the job done right, and his positive approach, all of which are so inspiring to others. He shows passion for all the many projects he works on, regularly multi-tasking very effectively. He has great enthusiasm for new designs and ideas. Duncan provides valuable support for the preparation of proposals for future instrument work. All of the work Duncan has completed has been delivered to an extremely high standard. He has worked with many colleagues, both within the lab and throughout the world, all of whom have both enjoyed and appreciated working with Duncan.

This year’s Elizabeth Puchnarewicz award for outstanding commitment to outreach was presented to Barry Whiteside who, as well as providing a lot of work behind the scenes within the outreach team, has also been prominent in delivering talks and getting involved in events both at MSSL and further afield. He worked in the Exomars tent at the MSSL Summer event, had a huge involvement in the UK’s Mars week in March and gave a talk about the engineering of PanCam and Exomars at the MSSL Open Evening. He served as a panellist during an online “Engineering in Space” careers panel which was streamed to thousands of schools nationwide and was invited to Birmingham City University to speak to engineering students about how they can pursue a career in space engineering.

“The team at BCU declared Your enthusiasm and down-to-earth approach were evident and made for acompelling talk. You made something that seems very distant to our students accessible. You are always welcome here."

This year’s awards were made more poignant when the Director’s Teaching award was posthumously presented to Professor Graziella Branduardi-Raymont, who had been a member of the Department for well over four decades, and who sadly died not long before the awards ceremony. Graziella made strong contributions in all aspects of the life of the Department, but here she was nominated for her service to teaching over many years, in particular through our MSc programme on Space Science and Engineering which she supported in a variety of roles over the years. Graziella never lost her passion for passing on to the next generation her love of research, space science and astronomy. Graziella is remembered as lecturer of great clarity, always well prepared and ready to help and explain, and as someone who inspired many students to take astronomy and space science further. We are all very sad to lose a much loved colleague. This sadness was tempered by the knowledge that she had been informed prior to her death that she had won this award and also that family members had elected to attend the awards ceremony to reflect on what a wonderful person she was. Graziella had been married to John Raymont and his nephew accepted the award on her behalf.

The final award for 2023, the Director’s Award, was presented to the new catering team of Leah Grant and Dominic Hallsworth in recognition of the positive difference they have made to the lab’s overall atmosphere by relaunching the staff restaurant with a wide variety of lunches provided to an impressive quality, quickly attracting a growing clientele.

Although peppered with sadness over the loss of a pillar of our community, the ceremony this year was a celebration of the family that is the Department of Space and Climate Physics, and another year of great achievements.