Prestigious scholarship for University of Glasgow physics PhD candidate

A postgraduate student from the University of Glasgow has been awarded a prestigious scholarship from the Institute of Physics (IOP). Lauren Muir, a PhD candidate in the School of Physics & Astronomy, has been named as one of this year's recipients of the Bell Burnell Graduate Scholarship Fund. The scholarship is named after the pioneering astrophysicist Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a graduate of the University of Glasgow who discovered the first evidence of radio pulsars in 1967. The graduate scholarship fund was instigated by Professor Dame Bell Burnell and the IOP in 2019 after Dame Jocelyn was awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for her role in the discovery of pulsars. Dame Jocelyn immediately donated her entire £2.3m prize award to the IOP. Her aim was to help counter what she described as "the unconscious bias that still exists in physics research", adding: "I don't need the money myself, and it seemed to me that this was perhaps the best use I could put it to." The fund aims to improve diversity in physics by offering doctoral scholarships to students from groups currently underrepresented in the physics research community. Those eligible include women, people with refugee status, ethnic minorities, disabled or financially disadvantaged students - and others who would otherwise struggle to complete a course of postgraduate study due to their circumstances.