The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) has announced the recipients of the 2025 Ernest Rutherford Fellowship, awarding the honour to seven early-career researchers. This year's cohort will lead their own research programmes at UK universities, supported by a total investment of £6 million.
The fellowship is a key initiative for supporting early-career physicists in the UK, enabling them to pursue independent research in fields such as particle physics, astronomy, and nuclear physics. The programme aims to help these researchers develop their careers.
The research projects undertaken by the 2025 fellows cover a diverse range of topics. These include planetary defence, the search for dark matter at the Large Hadron Collider, the development of new X-ray technology, and studies into the hidden oceans of icy moons. Other areas of focus are high-frequency gravitational waves, the earliest moments of the Universe, and the internal structure of black holes.
Professor Grahame Blair, Executive Director of Programmes at STFC, highlighted the breadth of questions being addressed by the researchers. He congratulated the fellows and expressed anticipation for their future discoveries.