Speakers

Monica D'Onofrio

Professor Monica D’Onofrio is Head of Research and Impact and Deputy Head of the Department of Physics at the University of Liverpool. She is a Professor in Particle Physics, and during her research career has been a key member of three large international Collaborations, the CDF experiment at Fermilab, and the ATLAS and FASER experiments at CERN. Monica pioneered and has been the main author of many searches for new physics beyond the Standard Model at hadron colliders, focusing on Supersymmetry, Dark Matter and Hidden sectors, and held major leading positions within the CDF and ATLAS Collaborations. She also contributes substantially to the development of future high energy physics projects and is a member of national and international committees. As Deputy Head of the Physics Department, she advises on the department research strategy and provides oversight to grant submissions and activities. Monica is a fellow of the Higher Education and Academy, she teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in quantum mechanics and particle physics, and participates to outreach events including lectures, interviews, and film makings, to promote science to the general public.

Professor Carla Figueira de Morisson Faria

Professor Carla Figueira de Morisson Faria was born in Belem (Amazon delta). She completed her MSci in Physics at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1994, and earned her PhD in 1999 at the Max Born Institute, Berlin/Technical University of Berlin, Germany, on strong-field and attosecond physics. Subsequently, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden (1999-2001), the MBI-Berlin (2002-2003), the Technical University Vienna (2002) and the University of Hanover (2003-2004). In 2005, she moved to the UK as a University Research Fellow at the Department of Mathematics, City, University of London, where she became a Lecturer in 2006. Thereafter, in 2007, she took up a lectureship at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London (UCL), where she initiated and leads a research group. Her research students have established careers that draw upon their research skills, and have been awarded 20 prizes at local, national and international levels. In 2013, she was promoted to Reader, and in 2018 to Professor of Physics. She authored around 100 publications, and has been the recipient of several awards, such as an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Advanced Research Fellowship in 2006. She is also the first South American two win the 2021 IoP Joseph Thomson Medal and Prize, and possibly the first female physics professor with mixed Black ancestry in the UK. Prof. Faria pursues a wide range of research interests, such as high-order harmonic generation and above-threshold ionization in atoms and molecules, correlated multielectron processes in strong fields, attosecond pulses, tailored fields, ultrafast imaging and photoelectron holography. Recently, she has focused on quantum effects in the attosecond domain, and on novel approaches such as the Coulomb Quantum Orbit Strong-Field Approximation (CQSFA). Beyond strong-field physics, she has also worked on non-Hermitian Hamiltonian systems, and short-pulse propagation. She is a co-founder and chair of the online workshop Quantum Battles in Attoscience, and the Atto Fridays seminar series, whose aim is to make world-leading science available free of charge to the global community (www.quantumbattles.com).

Dr Stacey Habergham-Mawson

Astrophysics Research Institute, Liverpool John Moores University

I currently manage the National Schools' Observatory project on a mission to make the Universe accessible to everyone, empowering them to do more and know more. My background is in observational astrophysics with a master's degree from Liverpool, and a Ph.D. from LJMU looking at supernova explosions in our nearby Universe. I have spent time teaching in UK secondary schools and have continued in academia to want to encourage more people to continue their STEM journey, driven by my own background of being the only person in my family to go to University. I have been involved in outreach with schools for over 15 years, sharing the passion I have for astronomy with the next generation, whose job it will be to help answer all the questions we can't, and discover the science and technology that will push the human race forward! I really look forward to meeting as many of you as possible at the conference in Liverpool in 2023!

Professor Laura Harkness-Brennan

Professor Laura Harkness-Brennan is Associate Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Impact at the University of Liverpool. She is also a Professor in Nuclear Physics, and a recipient of the Shell and Institute of Physics Women in Physics Very Early Career Award. Laura leads a research team of postdoctoral researchers and research students developing novel radiation detection and imaging techniques for medical physics and nuclear structure physics experiments. She has been a principal or co-investigator on over £29 million of external grant funding for this research. Laura teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in medical physics and nuclear instrumentation. She is a member of the Institute of Physics and a fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is passionate about contributing to the public understanding of physics by engaging in outreach activities such as public lectures and family science days.

Dr Izzy Jayasinghe

Dr Izzy Jayasinghe is a UKRI Future Leader Fellow in the University of Sheffield (UK) and the Deputy Lead for Molecular & Cell Biology Division in the newly-formed School of Biosciences. She is an optical microscopist and a biophysicist by training. Her research primarily focuses on the adaptation of various materials, optical technologies and in-situ molecule counting tools to advance super-resolution microscopy. Izzy was awarded her PhD by the University of Auckland (New Zealand) before undertaking two postdoctoral posts in the University of Queensland (Australia) and University of Exeter (UK). She founded her research group (the Applied Biophotonics Group) in 2015 at the University of Leeds (UK) before joining the University of Sheffield in 2020. Outside of academic roles, Izzy advises funding bodies such as the UKRI, EPSRC, and Science Foundation Ireland on embedding Equality, Diversity and Inclusion into their practices.

Dr Lia Li

Bio: Ying Lia Li (Lia) is the CEO and Founder of Zero Point Motion, an early stage startup creating chipscale optical inertial sensors. Lia was awarded the 2021 Institute of Physics Clifford Paterson Medal and Prize and is a 2022 Innovate UK Women in Innovation Awardee. She completed her combined undergraduate and master’s degree in physics at Imperial College before working on photonics and MEMS devices at BAE Systems. Between 2012-2016 she pursued a Ph.D. at University College London developing optical sensors and exploring macroscopic quantum state preparation. After her Ph.D. she was awarded an EPSRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, the prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellowship and an executive fellowship in entrepreneurship from Bristol University’s Quantum Technology Enterprise Centre. In 2020 Lia incorporated Zero Point Motion, securing seed investment in early 2022.

Dr Susha Parameswaran

I am a Senior Lecturer in Theoretical Physics at University of Liverpool, doing research at the interface between String Theory, Cosmology and Particle Physics.  My work is focussed on how the ideas emerging from string theory may be able to help us to address long-standing fundamental problems in high energy physics and cosmology, such as the nature of the Dark Energy which dominates our Universe today and causes its accelerated expansion.  I completed my PhD in 2005 at University of Cambridge, and then enjoyed several years as an itinerant postdoc, spending time in Trieste, Hamburg, Uppsala (where my daughter was born) and Hannover (where my son was born), before arriving in Liverpool in 2015 firstly with a European Marie Curie Fellowship.  I am currently teaching undergraduate courses in Relativity and Modern Particle Physics and am looking forward to meeting you all at CUWiP!

Dr Jess Wade

Dr Jess Wade is an Imperial College Research Fellow working in the Department of Materials at Imperial College London. Her research considers new materials for optoelectronic devices, with a focus on chiral organic semiconductors and how to optimise these chiral systems such that they can absorb/emit circularly polarised light as well as transport spin-polarised electrons. For her PhD Jess concentrated on new materials for photovoltaics and the development of advanced characterisation techniques to better understand their molecular packing. Outside of the lab, Jess is involved with several science communication and outreach initiatives. She is committed to improving diversity in science, both online and offline.