I. Can you hear me?
OK, good, I'm asking that because as some of you know, I have no hearing of my own and so I cannot tell if I am speaking loudly or softly.
So if I get soft, just throw something at me and I'm very good at responding to that kind of stimulation.
So, so I'm the new head of physics at Oxford.
And I want to tell you, first of all, that there has never been a better time to be the head of physics at Oxford.
I don't know why that is right. You know what that is, that's because over the last eight years under my predecessor,
Oxford launched a very ambitious trajectory and realised the goals that it set itself.
If you look at the rankings in terms of research, performance of the different UK universities, Oxford moved up those rankings to become number one.
And that's a testament to the incredible quality of our students, postdocs and our faculty and our support staff,
all of whom work together as one team to enable the research enterprise and education enterprise here and the outreach enterprise here.
The second thing was that our research funding itself also rose significantly, very significantly indeed in those in mathematical,
physical and life sciences, which is a division in which the 12 departments that are scientific work.
And actually, there's many such departments not in that division, in the medical sciences, but in a group of that group of 12.
We're number two in terms of generating research income.
And in terms of the rest of the UK, we're one of the top three consistently year on year.
The others are colleagues like Cambridge and a colleague, said Imperial.
Another thing that happened under John Wick two was that we were recognised nationally for achieving a more diverse, progressive and equal workplace.
We won awards for that nationally, and that's really the way to go.
But we're going to continue to strive to be one of the most diverse and welcoming places that turnout reflects the composition of our society.
And the first thing that happened was that the Bancroft building was built and that was enabled by a combination of alumni,
manufacturers and the wisdom of the university.
It cost more than 50 million. Some of you were here at the opening of it.
You can consider the Bancroft to be like an iceberg. You know, when you see an iceberg, the part you see above the water glistens in the light.
And that's like the upper half of the Bancroft building wonderful open area offices with an issue like set
of staircases that cause everybody to bounce into each other every day as they walk through the building.
Colleagues of mine in theoretical physics who used to live in the cable terrace and hadn't seen each other in some cases for five years,
and now seeing each other every single day and they're smiling and enjoying that.
And there's all kinds of new interactions, but with just us with an iceberg,
the face of an iceberg is so important is also because of what's under the water. Most of the mass of an iceberg is below the water.
Most of the mass of the Bancroft building is below the water below the ground in this case.
Half of the building is below ground and 17 metres below that ground.
There's a slab of concrete one point two metres thick the size of the building, which has enormous mass.
And that enormous mass makes it very difficult for vibrations from the environment to propagate into the building.
But that mass is actually supported by pillars that go another eight metres into the
ground on top of that enormous mass of 17 70 ton blocks of concrete that float on air.
And they form the floors of the lowest level of laboratories, of which we then place optical tables that are also floating on top of that,
if you measure the displacements from the environment, about 0.1 nanometres.
Some scale vibrations that mean that we can do experiments never before done, whether on quantum computing or using,
for example, scanning tunnelling microscopes and atomic force microscopes in new ways.
Those instruments are incredibly sensitive to vibration and how we can use them in ways that haven't
been done before on the power of thought has enabled us to make the first of a wave of new hires.
His name is. Seamus Davis is a distinguished professor at Cornell University,
one of the world leaders in STEM and has been drawn to Oxford, in part because of this wonderful new building that we have,
where he can put his fantastic, custom designed statements that are so advanced you can't buy them in industry and perform measurements made now.
The fact we've hired him has caused shockwaves around the world.
And so we've launched on timing all of these wonderful platform things that John has put in place.
We now launch an enormous and ambitious strategic hiring plan.
This is the first time physics as a whole has developed a hiring plan instead of some department,
and all of the faculty are coming together to develop that plan ready.
Five hires are in process.
We all advertised five positions and are conducting interviews to more will happen before the end of this academic year as well.
That's seven that one. And over the next two years, there'll be another step.
This is the largest number of hires made in a short period in a long time and Oxford and this has been
backed by the university because of our vision and the success that we've had over the last eight years.
So success breeds success at the same time.
If you look at our team today, we have 140 professors, about 200 postdocs,
about 200 research and administrative support staff, 360 graduate students and 760 undergraduate students.
Other up you get about 7500 people. That makes us one of the largest physics departments in the world.
But if you actually look at the rankings, you see where in the top 10 globally.
But if you actually look at many of our competitors in the top 10, they're achieving massive amounts of research output.
But often with a smaller number of people. And the reason for that difference is that many of those institutions are based in the United States,
where there's relatively large amounts of funding per faculty member. But we believe that by partnering with institutions around the globe.
We can't increase the number of students and post-docs, for example,
there are many institutions that would love to partner with us because we have a fabulous DPhil programme.
They would provide the funding to support the student. The student applies, and if they're admitted by us, you have two professors,
one from here and one from the university saying one of the Max Planck Institute.
We share the cost between us from the Max Planck Institute,
so that lowers our cost by a factor of to enable us to have double the number of students in that particular area.
And so we're in negotiations now with the Max Planck Institute to set up that new programme and by sponsoring the first of US students this year.
The other examples with other universities around the globe.
And that's one of the ways we increase the number of students most students we have of high quality.
The more research that we can do and that will lead to establishing ourselves in that top echelon and remaining there and at the same time,
ensuring that we do very well in the government's next research excellence framework activity.
And graduate students ready to make an enormous difference to research.
My own feeling is particle physics, and some years ago it was established that the neutrino had mass.
The experiment was called the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada.
And when that experiment was built, the only British university involved was Oxford.
Oxford built much of the apparatus here and shipped it to Canada.
When the analysis was done, very difficult analysis to demonstrated that neutrinos can change from one Typekit to another.
A very key part of that analysis was done by an Oxford graduate student.
That Oxford graduate student was from China. It would never been out before the tuition, but an overseas student to come here.
But it was actually funded by an alumnus. But he made a key contribution that led to the Nobel prise.
And so a graduate student that was funded by an alumnus achieved something truly great,
and many of the graduate students we have today are funded by alumni and we'd like to have more.
And we believe that we need more because we have to be competitive.
We have to be able to do great science both for the UK and for the world as a whole.
The mission of this department is to do great science, but also to apply that science,
not just to understand the evolution and possible fate of the universe,
but also to understand the human condition and find ways in which we can improve it.
Because our science leads to innovation. It's impossible to conceive of a modern technological society without physics.
And most of that technology came from an understanding in particular of quantum mechanics.
Once we can understand how electrons move in solids, all of the other things flow from iPods to modern technology and hospitals.
But it's the fact that in this country, most of our politicians do not understand this connexion,
and we have to constantly talk to them about this connexion.
I find that when I have talked to them, they are always listening.
That always impressed. I'd like to know more, but they're up in Westminster,
completely surrounded by other people who are worrying about some political manoeuvre or some legislation that might change the course of the country.
And yet they do it in such a flippant and unthinking what? And at the same time, they're missing the opportunity to invest.
We have fabulous universities in this country.
We have fabulous students in this country, and we draw very, very large numbers of talented people from around the globe.
That's the real strength. And that's the strength on which we'll build Oxford physics and hope to build the UK.
And so we are doing everything we can to increase our ability to impact society.
We've managed to hire one of the best project engineers in the world.
He joined us in August, and his job is to oversee the remarkable support for such services that we have here,
for example, our mechanical workshop, which was one of the best in the world. By creating the infrastructure here,
it enables academics to bid in a competitive market for larger instruments so that they can then build those larger instruments,
bring in larger amounts of resource which enable us to have more post-docs, more students and befriend more professorships.
But in recent years, we've been less competitive in that particular market than some of our UK competitors,
who by any international measure wouldn't look so strong, but they've already targeted preparing great proposals to go after those resources.
Our colleagues here didn't have the kind of support that they needed to actually be competitive,
so we're going to change that and create a more supportive environment.
And sorted through that enormous expansion in our strategic ambitions for hiring equity plans
to increase the number of post-docs and students plans to increase impact through innovation,
partnering also with Oxford Innovation, which is creating the largest venture capital fund of any university in the world
and making it easier for us as academics to set up companies that can create
new products to improve the human condition and finally to make sure that
Oxford's student body is truly representative of the world and of this country.
At this very minute encounter and Blackbird lives, there are kids who have never actually been into the centre of the city.
As I discovered when I invited six of them to make up about six months ago,
some of them had never been to the Natural History Museum right next to my lab. Now something really wrong with that, but we have to change it.
I came from that kind of environment myself, and there's plenty of smart people in those environments.
And so we've launched a programme in conjunction with schools and county and black
leaders to bring young people to Oxford several times a week from the age of 16,
up to help teach A-level physics so that kids that would have had no chance to go to university
at all could in the future have an opportunity to go to university within a few years,
perhaps in some cases to universities like Cambridge or Oxford.
And so that's the that's what's going on and lots of physics, I'll be happy to take any questions.
Otherwise I'd like to go out of the way because the biggest job had two big drops we have.
We've got to get out of the way and we've got to facilitate. The second of those is much harder than the first.
But we're making great strides. So I'd like I've be happy to take questions, otherwise I'd like to pursue to one of my great colleagues, John Troca,
who's the head of theoretical physics, who will actually tell you about the amazing programme today that you're going to hear so any questions?
Fantastic. I will say I was told this morning coming in by several of you,
but they could remember a time when this event had 20 or 30 people in the held and another much more in the building.
The fact that it's so large today is absolutely fantastic. We want all of you to have a lifelong relationship with Oxford.
So happy you're here. And we're happy to tell you the story of the story that's unfolding in physics and theoretical physics today.
So thank you very much.