Dr Gizem Acar Tekin

ClimbAwards Rising Star Startup of the Year 2026

Lancaster University spinout Photarix has been named Rising Star Startup of the Year at the ClimbAwards 2026, recognising the company as one of the UK’s most promising emerging businesses. The award was presented to Photarix CEO and co-founder Dr Gizem Acar Tekin at the awards ceremony in Leeds.

The ClimbUK Awards celebrate the innovators, entrepreneurs, and leaders who are driving growth, transformation, and positive change across the UK. The Rising Star category is awarded to early-stage businesses that are showing exceptional promise in terms of innovation and growth potential.

Dr Ian Bailey

Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics 2026

Dr Ian Bailey from Lancaster University is among the winners of this year’s Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific awards that celebrates new scientific discoveries.

The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was founded in 2012 by Yuri Milner to recognise those individuals who have made profound contributions to human knowledge. This year, the $3 million prize has been awarded to approximately 350 collaborators who contributed to publications reporting the most precise measurement to date of the magnetic field produced by the fundamental subatomic particle, the muon, through experiments at CERN, Brookhaven, and Fermilab.

Quantum Base

Times Higher Education Knowledge Exchange/Transfer Initiative of the Year Award 2025

Spinout company Quantum Base received the Times Higher Education (THE) Knowledge Exchange/Transfer Initiative of the Year Award 2025 for their "Quantum Base Q-ID®: Setting a New Global Standard in Anti-Counterfeiting Technology Through Physics Knowledge Exchange”. Quantum Base became Lancaster University's first spin-out company to float on London's AIM market earlier this year, raising £4.8 million through an Initial Public Offering (IPO).

The THE Awards are the biggest celebration of UK and Irish higher education, recognising excellence across academia, professional services, leadership and knowledge exchange.

Professor Oleg Kolosov

Institute of Physics David Tabor Medal 2025

Professor of Nanoscience Oleg Kolosov has been awarded the 2025 Institute of Physics David Tabor Medal and Prize, which marks distinguished contributions to surface or nanoscale physics. Professor Kolosov received his award for important innovations in the field of scanning probe microscopy that have helped to elucidate the physical properties of nanostructures.

The Institute of Physics (IOP) is the professional body and learned society for physics, and the leading body for practising physicists, in the UK and Ireland. The IOP awards numerous prizes to acknowledge contributions to physics research, education and applications, including research awards such as the David Tabor Medal.

Quinas Technology

World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) Global Award 2025

Lancaster University's spinout company, Quinas Technology, was awarded the prize in the ICT Start Up category - the (joint) first UK company to ever win a WIPO Global Award. Quinas was recognised for its work in reshaping the future of computer memory with its patented ULTRARAM™ technology, which combines the speed of DRAM and the non-volatility of flash in a single device. This breakthrough enables faster, more energy-efficient computing with vast applications across data centres, mobile devices, and AI hardware. The technology was developed in the research group of Physics Professor Manus Hayne, also Quinas Chief Scientific Officer, and has resulted in five granted patents in four countries, with another eight patents pending.

The WIPO Global Awards recognise startups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that use intellectual property (IP) as a driver for innovation, business growth, and positive social impact.

ATLAS Collaboration

Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics 2025

The ATLAS Collaboration - alongside three other Large Hadron Collider experiments (CMS, ALICE and LHCb) won the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for their results obtained in the Run-2 datasets. The prize was awarded for their detailed measurements of Higgs boson properties confirming the symmetry-breaking mechanism of mass generation, the discovery of new strongly interacting particles, the study of rare processes and matter-antimatter asymmetry, and the exploration of nature at the shortest distances and most extreme conditions at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was founded in 2012 by Yuri Milner to recognize those individuals who have made profound contributions to human knowledge. It is open to all physicists – theoretical, mathematical, experimental – working on the deepest mysteries of the Universe. ATLAS received a $1M share of the $3M of prize money reserved for this award.

Professor Isobel Hook

Caroline Herschel Medal 2025

Professor of Astrophysics Isobel Hook received the Caroline Herschel Medal 2025 for her work on creating next-generation astronomical facilities such as the future Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) in enhancing our ability to probe the faintest and most distant cosmic phenomena, and her contributions to 4MOST, Euclid and the Rubin Observatory in advancing large-scale surveys of dark energy and galaxy evolution.

The Caroline Herschel Medal – with an accompanying prize of £10,000 supported by the UK Government – is jointly awarded by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) and German Astronomical Society (Astronomische Gesellschaft, AG). It commemorates the legacy of Caroline Herschel, a distinguished astronomer working in the late 18th and the first half of the 19th century who made a number of groundbreaking discoveries, including several comets.

Professor Janne Ruostekoski

Joseph Thomson Medal 2024

Professor Janne Ruostekoski Chair in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics, was awarded the Joseph Thomson Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics for his outstanding contributions to the fundamental understanding of cooperative interactions between light and atomic ensembles, as well as for pioneering efforts in harnessing these interactions for applications.

The Joseph Thomson Medal and Prize has been awarded biennially since 2008 to physicists performing distinguished research in atomic or molecular physics.

Professor Mike Kosch

Dennis Gabor Medal and Prize 2024

Professor Mike Kosch received the Institute of Physics' Dennis Gabor Medal and Prize for image processing techniques, derived from pioneering auroral research, that have been deployed in hundreds of automated cameras for wildfire detection, realising huge savings in timber and CO2 emissions. The Dennis Gabor Medal and Prize is awarded annually for distinguished contributions to the application of physics in an industrial, commercial or business context.

Professor Kosch's company has deployed over 340 camera systems so far around the world, mainly in South Africa and North America but also in Ghana and Australia, with trials underway in Chile, China, Indonesia, Greece and Spain. In North America, it is estimated that ForestWatch systems have saved £1.6 billion in timber and 38 million tonnes of CO2, valued at £1.9 billion in the period 2014 to 2020.

Dr Samuli Autti

Nicholas Kurti Science Prize 2023

Dr Samuli Autti was awarded the 2023 Nicholas Kurti Science Prize by Oxford Instruments for his work on macroscopic quantum systems at ultra-low temperatures, leading the way to understanding exotic topological defects, time crystals and their interactions, the decay of quantum turbulence, and the microstructure of unconventional superfluids.

The Prize is awarded annually for research excellence to promote and recognise the novel work of early career scientists in the fields of low temperatures and/or high magnetic fields in Europe.

Professor Farideh Honary

Royal Astronomical Service Award 2022

Professor Farideh Honary was awarded the 2022 Royal Astronomical Society Service Award for services to Geophysics at the annual RAS meeting. Professor Honary has played a leading role in establishing the field of radio science within space plasma physics in the UK, and in representing the community internationally. She established what is now the Space and Planetary Physics Group at Lancaster University and later founded and led the consortium for the Global Riometer Array (GLORIA), an international collaborative programme with over 13 countries.

The Service Award is to honour individuals or team leaders who, through outstanding or exceptional work, have promoted, facilitated or encouraged the sciences of astronomy or geophysics and developed their role nationally or internationally.

Dr Licia Ray

Royal Astronomical Society James Dungey Lectureship 2022

Dr Licia Ray was awarded the RAS James Dungey Lectureship 2022 at the annual meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society for her work on the science of how planetary atmospheres couple to their local space environments, focusing on gas giant planets. In particular, she worked on developing a steady-state model of the magnetosphere-ionosphere current system at Jupiter that can reproduce many of the observed characteristics of Jupiter's auroral structure.

The James Dungey Lectureship is given annually to an authoritative and engaging speaker on topics relating to geophysics (including solar physics, solar-terrestrial physics, or planetary sciences).

Professor Colin Lambert

Mott Medal and Prize 2022

Professor Colin Lambert was awarded the Institute of Physics Mott Medal and Prize in 2022 for his visionary theories of quantum-interference-enhanced, molecular-scale electron and phonon transport, which underpin recent designs for molecular-scale memories, sensors, switches and ultra-thin-film thermoelectric materials.

The Mott Medal and Prize is awarded biennially for distinguished contributions to condensed matter physics and materials.

Professor Jim Wild

Royal Astronomical Society James Dungey Lectureship 2018

Professor Jim Wild was awarded the RAS James Dungey Lectureship 2018 at the annual meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society for his work in the field of space plasma physics, notably on the aurora borealis, the impact of space weather on human technology and the interaction between the Martian atmosphere and the interplanetary environment.

The James Dungey Lectureship is given annually to an authoritative and engaging speaker on topics relating to geophysics (including solar physics, solar-terrestrial physics, or planetary sciences).

Professor Isobel Hook

Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics 2015

As a member of the Supernova Cosmology Project (SCP) collaboration, Professor Isobel Hook was awarded a share of the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe. The discovery was based on detailed observations of distant supernovae, for which Professor Hook's primary contribution was in the spectroscopic measurements. This led to her co-authorship of the 1998 paper presenting the SCP's results. This paper was also the basis for the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics, which was awarded jointly to the SCP team leader (Professor Saul Perlmutter) and the leaders of a second team (Professors Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess).