I want you to stop by to say a few words about the physics department before we go on to prime time.
So my name is Ashok Sun, head of physics at almost every day,
I've asked whether I like my job and actually it really is on the reason it's pronounced because this department is astonishing.
And one of the things that we have been doing over the last year has been developing
a strategic plan for to search for education for our outreach programme,
activities for diversity and inclusion for everything that we do with the goal to screen everyone in the world.
We're already in the top 10 in every metric, but we aim to be better than that.
And so the key part of that was developing a plan for where we're going and then holding it up to scrutiny.
And so envoy invited to a group of very distinguished physicists from across the board from both both America and Europe,
including such schools as Princeton and through Chicago, and closer to home places like Cambridge in the home.
So they came here to judge what we're doing.
And so they describe every student we get in the process of preparing for that, and they taught us a great deal about ourselves.
I'm quite impressed, not the point. It's not the attempt to pressure ourselves, we have to get other people to verify that.
So these people looked and it was on the 17th and 18th of February, two very intense days.
At the end of that, they produced a draught report. The final report won't be ready until March or so, but they shared with us their main conclusions.
And so first, I found that in every area in which we're engaged in research, which is the most reported, we are world class.
And education, both undergraduate master's course and in the education of our graduate students, the world class.
And innovation and enterprise that needs to spin out dramatically improved from a few years ago in our outreach activities,
in our alumni activities were amongst the best that they've ever seen.
And many of them said they'd learn a lot from this review,
and they're going to take back some of the things they've seen to Princeton and to Berkeley, out to Chicago.
And perhaps even some of the very, very happy with they did point out that there were some things that could be improved.
So one of them was that they marvelled at the big problem. It's absolutely spectacular, it's on the launchpad.
It's enabled us to hire fantastic physicists as vacancies have become available or the opportunities arise, and we continue to do so.
But now that you have something as beautiful as the big crops that can support such amazing science both above ground below ground,
you need to look at the rest of your estate. And when you do this, it's far from being at the quality of the big four, if not remotely close.
And so one of the things that this report is going to recommend is it's this university
works with its alumni to invest more in the physics department to upgrade our buildings.
And so we're very, very pleased by that, of course.
But another thing that they said is that even though you do outstanding research and your students are a great driver of that research,
along with your postdocs and your faculty supported by the staff.
That the number of students that you have, even though is 400 and what graduate students, which sounds like a lot.
It's not competitive with the truck schools around the clock, and what they mean by that is the typical tuck school has full students faculty.
No. We have three. And so they urge us to increase the number of graduate students.
They know that the backdrop to that is that if you look at our current cohort of 401.
The group of truly tons of people that half of them are not receiving support from the UK government, the traditional route of student trips,
half of them are finding support from other institutions around the globe and from private individuals, including our alumni.
People like James Dodd, people like Marty look, people like Nick Greenwood.
People like Simon Harrison. People like Richard Golding and people like all of you that supported Oxfam.
They urged all of you to continue to do this because if we are to be the number one physics department in the world,
we have to continue to attract top students from around the globe and often we are turning
away students every year that apply to us in vastly larger numbers that we can take.
And where do those students go? That doesn't come to us. They go to NYC and they go to Princeton or even the Cambridge.
So we have to be able to offer more opportunities, and we'd like all of you to help us in any way you can.
Now there's lots of other exciting activities apart from some of the morning symbolic visits over the next week.
One of them is this, which is the 80th anniversary of the French club's memorandum.
And so is a public lecture here on the force of elections, whether sleep from five to 6:30 p.m. and we would love it.
If you would like to call it, please sign up at the Eventbrite page.
And one more thing I'd like to say before I close this is possibly my favourite alumni ever.
And I was placed alone today. But not only does it always happen, but it's soda and rock of time just three days.
But putting up with that rock page and you were actually signing up, I now it will come.
So despite the challenges the world's facing at the moment, we will break the drought and come here.
So thank you for joining us. And I'm turning over the judge Walker, the head of the sub department of Theoretical Physics.
Thank.