Backed by a £6 million investment, these new fellows will investigate fundamental questions in physics, from the origins of gravitational waves to new physics beyond the Standard Model.
The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) has awarded a new cohort of seven emerging UK science leaders with its Ernest Rutherford Fellowship for 2025.
Making landmark contributions
Regarded as one of the UK’s premier awards for early-career physicists, the fellowship supports individuals poised to make landmark contributions in:
- particle physics
- astronomy
- nuclear physics
The fellowships will also help them to develop their careers and push the boundaries of their field.
Challenging modern physics
The £6 million investment will enable the fellows to undertake studies across some of the most challenging questions we face in physics today.
That work will include research into gravitational waves, looking at physics beyond the Standard Model.
It will also try to understand the properties of the quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter believed to have existed shortly after the Big Bang.
Supporting the next generation
The fellowship is designed to reward talented researchers at UK universities and encourage bright minds to come to, or remain in, the country and contribute to the UK’s scientific ambitions.
Now in its 15th consecutive year, the programme has supported more than 100 early-career researchers and has significantly bolstered UK physics research capability.
Previous awardees have gone on to take permanent, senior positions at world-leading UK research institutes and each new cohort provides an exciting glimpse into the future of UK physics.
An impressive legacy
Professor Grahame Blair, Executive Director of Research Programmes at STFC, said:
One of the joys of reading through the proposals of our latest Ernest Rutherford fellows is learning what excites the researchers who are aiming to make tomorrow’s big physics breakthroughs.
We receive many, exceptionally high-quality applications for this fellowship and it is exceedingly difficult each year to decide on the successful awardees.
STFC are very proud of the achievements of all our previous fellows and we look forward to following the progress of this latest cohort as they reaffirm the UK’s place as a leader in physics and astronomy research.
Congratulations to the 2025 Ernest Rutherford fellows and good luck in your research endeavours.
Empowering future leaders
Dr Nils Hermansson Truedsson, a theoretical physicist at The University of Edinburgh, said:
The Ernest Rutherford Fellowship will allow me to undertake highly ambitious work, establish my own independent research programme and thereby develop to become a scientific leader.
Dr Jaime Norman, a nuclear and particle physicist at the University of Liverpool, said:
I am thrilled to be awarded this prestigious fellowship and to be launching this exciting research programme at the University of Liverpool.
Quark-gluon plasma is a fascinating form of exotic matter and studying it will deepen our understanding of the universe’s earliest moments and how the visible matter we see today came into being.
Dr Joseph Davighi, a theoretical physicist at the University of Cambridge, said:
I am honoured to be awarded this prestigious Fellowship and very excited to embark on the next five years of my research, developing and testing new solutions to some of our biggest puzzles in particle physics, largely centred on the nature of the Higgs boson.
Meet the new Ernest Rutherford fellows
Probing the origins of gravitational wave sources
Dr Isobel Romero-Shaw, Cardiff University
Dr Isobel Romero-Shaw is a gravitational-wave astrophysicist whose research focuses on the origins and environments of binary compact objects, such as black holes and neutron stars.
She has played a leading role in uncovering how gravitational waves carry hidden clues about the formation of binary compact objects, such as the shapes of their paths around each other and what this tells us about their evolution.
By using advanced data analysis techniques, she turns these faint cosmic signals into new insights about where these powerful systems come from.
Through her fellowship, she will disentangle the complex interplay between key signatures in gravitational wave signals, such as orbital eccentricity and spin-induced precession, to reveal the environments in which these binaries form.
Her work will prepare the field for the next generation of gravitational-wave observatories, capable of detecting millions of signals per year and probing the Universe to its earliest epochs.
Reimagining new physics: Higgs, flavour, dark matter and topology beyond the Standard Model
Dr Joseph Davighi, University of Cambridge
Dr Joseph Davighi is a theoretical physicist who investigates what might lie beyond our current understanding of fundamental particles and their interactions.
Despite the many triumphs of the Standard Model, most notably its prediction of the Higgs boson, many deep mysteries remain unsolved.
Chief among them are the fundamental origin of the Higgs and why it is so light, the existence of ultra-heavy ‘flavours’ of particle, and the nature of dark matter that fills our Universe.
Dr Davighi is developing bold new theoretical frameworks that unify these three mysteries.
By combining the idea of a composite Higgs boson with flavour non-universal forces, he aims to explain the origin of the Higgs and heavy flavour particles simultaneously.
He also proposes intriguing new portals to dark matter and the Higgs, rooted in the abstract mathematics of topology.
He will bring together mathematicians and experimental physicists at Cambridge to develop these theories through to original experimental searches, charting new paths to discovery using present and future particle colliders.
Timothy Cunningham
Dr Timothy Cunningham, University of Warwick
Dr Timothy Cunningham is an astrophysicist who studies white dwarf stars, the dense, fading remnants of stars like our Sun.
He uses advanced computer simulations to understand how their outer layers behave and evolve over time, helping us learn more about the final stages of a star’s life.
His work is particularly focused on white dwarfs polluted by planetary debris, using X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, and infrared spectroscopy to study the physics of accretion and reconstruct the chemical composition of exoplanetary material.
The fellowship will continue Dr Cunningham’s work to harness this cosmic phenomenon to reconstruct the bulk composition of exoplanetary material.
By developing cutting edge 3D radiation hydrodynamic simulations, he models the complex convective processes in ageing white dwarfs, particularly the elusive phenomenon of convective overshoot.
These models dramatically improve the accuracy of spectroscopic analyses used to infer the elemental makeup of accreted planetary debris.
Jets in hot hadronic matter
Dr Jaime Norman, University of Liverpool
Dr Jaime Norman is a nuclear and particle physicist at the University of Liverpool who helps lead work on the A Large Ion Collider Experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
He studies what happens when atomic nuclei collide at incredibly high energies, creating conditions similar to those just after the Big Bang.
His research reveals how matter behaved in those extreme moments by tracking the resulting particle jets and how their energy is distributed.
This fellowship will support his leadership through LHC runs three and four and help establish a dynamic research group in heavy-ion physics.
Beyond research, Dr Norman is a passionate mentor and science communicator, committed to inclusive research environments and outreach that blends physics with art and music.
Astrophysics and cosmology from CMB scattering
Dr William Coulton, University of Oxford
Dr William Coulton is a cosmologist who studies the oldest light in the Universe to better understand how it has evolved over time.
He develops new ways to analyse this ancient light, known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB), by filtering out background noise and unwanted signals.
His work helps scientists measure key features of the Universe more precisely, such as the mass of neutrinos and the conditions that existed just after the Big Bang.
The CMB is the afterglow of the Big Bang, subtly altered as it travels through the evolving cosmic web.
These distortions known as secondary anisotropies offer a powerful lens into the growth of cosmic structures and the fundamental physics governing the Universe.
Dr Coulton will leverage data from the newly operational Simons Observatory to map these anisotropies with unprecedented precision.
Through this fellowship, Dr Coulton will lead a transformative research programme at Oxford, combining advanced statistical techniques with cutting-edge observations.
His publicly released data products will serve as a foundation for the broader astrophysics’ community.
Hadrons as a portal to new physics
Dr Nils Hermansson Truedsson, The University of Edinburgh
Dr Nils Hermansson Truedsson is a theoretical physicist at The University of Edinburgh who studies the building blocks of matter, tiny particles called hadrons, made of quarks and gluons.
His research explores the strong force, one of nature’s fundamental forces, to understand how it shapes these particles.
By using powerful simulations and mathematical tools, he’s helping to reveal whether this force might also offer clues to new physics beyond our current theories.
Despite its success, the Standard Model leaves several fundamental questions unanswered such as the origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe.
Dr Hermansson Truedsson’s research uses hadrons as precision tools to test the Standard Model and search for signs of new physics.
Hosted at Edinburgh, a global hub for numerical physics, Dr Hermansson Truedsson will lead a high-impact programme that bridges analytical and computational approaches.
His work will set new standards for precision in particle physics and open new pathways for indirect searches for unknown particles and forces.
Galactic palaeontology from Gaia to LISA
Dr Valeriya Korol, University of Cambridge
Dr Valeriya Korol is an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge who studies the Milky Way’s hidden stellar remnants in binary systems such as:
- white dwarfs
- neutron stars
- black holes
These ancient objects are like fossils, holding clues to the history of our galaxy.
By combining light-based observations with gravitational-wave signals, she pieces together how stars evolve and how the Milky Way was built over time.
Dr Korol’s research is strategically aligned with two major space missions:
- the European Space Agency’s Gaia, which maps the positions and motions of over a billion stars
- the upcoming Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), which will detect gravitational waves from compact binary systems in the millihertz frequency range
Her work includes modelling double white dwarf binaries, probing the Galactic Centre for exotic systems, and building a comprehensive mock catalogue of gravitational-wave sources to support LISA’s scientific goals.
These efforts not only advance astrophysics but also contribute to broader questions about dark matter, stellar dynamics, and the structure of our galaxy.
Through her Ernest Rutherford Fellowship, Dr Korol will establish herself as a leader in the next generation of gravitational-wave astronomers, committed to both cutting-edge research and public engagement.