We, the undersigned, call on the University of Nottingham to reverse its plans to impose compulsory redundancies on its staff in the School of Physics and Astronomy.
Update 26/05/2026: We have closed the letter to new signatures. We would like to express our sincere thanks to our 2700 colleagues for their support. This is the same number of people as have received 'at risk of redundancy' letters from the University of Nottingham.
We, the undersigned, call on the University of Nottingham to reverse its plans to impose compulsory redundancies on its staff in the School of Physics and Astronomy.
The University threatens to cut twenty members of staff out of the seventy one currently in the School. On 12 May, fifty six of those members of staff received letters notifying them that they were at risk of redundancy. This affects academic and technical staff at all levels, from Research Fellows to Professors.
These proposals will cause long-lasting damage to the University of Nottingham. In particular:
The University of Nottingham branch of the University and College Union has proposed alternative measures to ensure the financial health of the University while avoiding the need for compulsory redundancies. We urge the University’s senior leadership team to work with them and create a more sustainable vision for Physics and Astronomy at Nottingham.
Update 15/05/2026: We invite signatures from colleagues in the academic physics community beyond Nottingham. We are very grateful for the volume of responses. Please note there may be some delay while your submission is checked and posted.
| Name | Institution | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Prof. Giorgio Parisi, Nobel Laureate Physics 2021 | Sapienza University of Rome | |
| Prof. Andrea Ghez, Nobel Laureate Physics 2020 | University of California Los Angeles | |
| Prof. Sir Roger Penrose OM FRS, Nobel Laureate Physics 2020 | University of Oxford | The decision to dismiss this large group of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Members at the University of Nottingham, through no fault of their own, is appalling and should be reversed immediately. |
| Prof Didier Queloz, FRS, Nobel Laureate Physics 2019 | U. Cambridge | |
| Prof Kip S Thorne, Nobel Laureate Physics 2017 | California Institute of Technology | |
| Prof Art McDonald, FRS, Nobel Laureate Physics 2015 | Gray Chair in Particle Astrophysics, Emeritus. Queen's University | |
| Prof. Brian P. Schmidt AC FRS, Nobel Laureate Physics 2011 | Australian National University | |
| Prof. Andre Geim FRS, Nobel Laureate Physics 2010 | University of Manchester | |
| Professor Sir Konstantin Novoselov FRS, Nobel Laureate Physics 2010 | National University of Singapore | |
| Professor William Phillips, Nobel Laureate Physics 1997 | Joint Quantum Institute | Such cuts to research and education programs so important to the future economic health of the UK are woefully short sighted. The damage done would take years and decades to heal. |
| Professor Lord Martin Rees FRS | Cambridge University | |
| Prof. Brian Cox FRS | The University of Manchester | |
| Prof. Catherine Heymans (Astronomer Royal for Scotland) | University of Edinburgh | Nottingham’s Physics and Astronomy department is first-rate; cutting its size by almost third is unthinkable and will be disastrous for undergraduates. Such a move signals a lack of confidence in a critical research area, deterring future applicants and weakening the UK pipeline of physicists, teachers, and innovators in data science and AI. In a time of rising living costs, we need strong, geographically distributed physics departments so students can study close to home and our economy can thrive. The university should exhaust every option to make the department sustainable before resorting to compulsory redundancies; shrinking it now is shortsighted. |
| Prof Jim Wild (President, Royal Astronomical Society) | Lancaster University | As President of the Royal Astronomical Society, I urge the University of Nottingham to reconsider these short-sighted cuts. Reducing staff capacity by this magnitude will irreparably damage a world-class department, severely harming both its international reputation and its capacity to deliver high-quality education. |
| Sir Peter Knight FRS | Imperial College London | Nottingham Physics is an outstanding department, with leadership from fundamental research through to technology developments that will transform lives. The quantum technology work there in functional brain imaging is world leading affecting our ability to deal with brain trauma, juvenile epilepsy and so much more. Losing such a centre would be a tragedy. |
| Prof John Ellis FRS | King's College London | Unprintable |
| Prof Wendy Freedman FRS, NAS | University of Chicago | |
| Professor Jim Al-Khalili CBE FRS | University of Surrey | Having had personal experience of cuts like this at my own university (Surrey) – and indeed took early retirement to save other younger staff - I think this is is short-sighted and highly damaging to the UK. Nottingham Physics is one of the most respected and prestigious departments in the country and this proposed "cull" would be both devastating and foolish. |
| Prof. John Peacock FRS | University of Edinburgh | These proposed cuts are all too reminiscent of similar situations elsewhere. They are the result of poor management decisions on capital spending. What is needed is for expenditure on vanity projects to be controlled, and then Universities like Nottingham could concentrate on funding their actual purpose: employing world-class staff for teaching and research. |
| Carlos Frenk CBE FRS | Durham University | Cutting physics teaching and research is shortsighted and detrimental both to Nottingham University and the country. |
| Prof. Cathie Clarke FRS | Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge | Tragic to see the axe falling on a highly performing department doing fundamental science: hard to fathom how the decision can be justified in terms of the University's long term commitment to educational excellence. |
| Prof Richard Ellis FRS | University College London | I was appointed to a panel in 1998 by the then Vice-Chancellor of Nottingham to help select a newly-established chair of astronomy at the University. This was a very exciting development and attracted two outstanding candidates, Michael Merrifield and Peter Coles. The Vice-Chancellor was sufficiently enthusiastic about this initiative that, when the panel found it hard to select between Merrifield and Coles, he decided exceptionally to appoint both! This established what, over 27 years, has become one of the most successful research groups in the UK bringing in significant external resources, providing an outstanding teaching programme that inspires all those undertaking the natural sciences, and which is playing an exceptionally successful role in outreach activities. Indeed, Nottingham astronomy has become a benchmark for many physics departments around the country that developed astronomy groups subsequently. It seems very counter-intuitive for the University to drastically reduce staff in the physical sciences given the strategic importance of the subject for UK, and for astronomy in particular given the strong worldwide demand for undergraduates places. It's very sad for me personally to read about these proposed cuts given how proud I was to help establish this thriving research effort 27 years ago. |
| Prof James Dunlop FRS | University of Edinburgh | I fully support our colleagues in Nottingham who, like many across the sector, are the victim of utterly incompetent University management |
| Prof. Jo Dunkley OBE FRS | Princeton University | Nottingham’s Physics and Astronomy department is highly respected internationally, with expertise built over years; the proposed cuts would be an enormous loss to the field and to the university. |
| Professor Andrew Fabian FRS | University of Cambridge | |
| Prof. Max Pettini FRS | University of Cambridge | What are they thinking? One has to question the competence of the University of Nottingham senior management. Once again, staff and students bear the brunt of ill-conceived financial decisions. The proposed staff cuts to one of the premier Physics and Astronomy departments in the UK are an act of self-harm from which it will be very difficult to recover. Surely there must be less drastic ways to manage whatever financial difficulties the University now finds itself in. |
| Prof Nial Tanvir FRS | University of Leicester | |
| Prof. Jonathan Coleman FRS | Trinity College Dublin | As a physicist and academic, I strongly support this petition and urge the University of Nottingham to reconsider these proposed compulsory redundancies. Physics departments are long-term strategic assets whose value cannot be measured solely in short-term financial terms. Once lost, internationally recognised expertise, technical capability, and research culture take decades to rebuild. The scale of the proposed cuts risks serious damage to one of the UK’s respected physics schools, undermining both teaching quality and research excellence. At a time when physics underpins emerging technologies ranging from quantum devices and advanced materials to AI hardware, energy technologies, and medical diagnostics, weakening capacity in Physics and Astronomy is profoundly short-sighted. Universities have a responsibility not only to balance budgets, but also to protect the intellectual infrastructure on which future innovation depends. I urge the University leadership to work constructively with staff and the UCU to identify alternative solutions that preserve the long-term strength and sustainability of Physics and Astronomy at Nottingham. |
| Prof. Roberto Maiolino FRS | University of Cambridge | |
| Professor Simon White FRS | Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics | Serious financial mismanagement suggests a lack of appropriate skills. However, the proposed solution appears to show even greater incompetence in an area where a university administration might be expected to excel, namely in curating their institution's reputation and the excellence of its strongest and most visible departments. Physics and Astronomy in Nottingham definitely fall in this latter category. Perhaps those who manage the managers should step in before irrevocable damage is done. |
| Prof. Malcolm H. Levitt FRS | University of Southampton | This is a policy of staggering destructiveness and declaration of equally staggering incompetence by the leadership of the University of Nottingham. This is one of the leading physics departments in the country. It is a matter of national importance that this stupid and ignorant decision is reversed. Shameful! |
| Professor Gerry Gilmore FRS | University of Cambridge | Short term staff cuts squander long term investment capital value, such as reputation, and are exceptionally difficult to reverse. Who would trust this management in future? |
| Professor Nigel Glover FRS | Durham University | |
| Prof Michael Duff FRS | Imperial College | |
| Prof Miles Padgett OBE FRS | The University of Glasgow | UoN Physics has created, arguably, the UK's most promising Quantum Sensing Company - addressing important clinical need. |
| Professor Chris Hull FRS | Imperial College | |
| Prof James Binney FRS | University of Oxford | This is a decision of breathtaking stupidity. Nottingham's Physics Department has for decades been World-leading, so its (likely) destruction is an exercise in self harm. The drive to impose a uniform staff/student ratio across all departments is insane. Science is founded on experiments and experiments are costly. You can't conduct research or deliver sound training in an experimental subject with a staff/student ratio of 18 or greater as proposed, which is why other Russell group physics depatments have a mean ratio similar to that of Nottingham Physics. If these redundancies go ahead, the best physics faculty will leave Nottingham, outstanding candidates will no longer accept offers from Nottingham and the quality of the student body will rapidly decline. It takes generations to create a world-class department, but one can be destroyed in less than a decade. |
| Dr Dame Frances Saunders DBE, CB, FREng | Independent Advisor | At a time when the U.K. needs university physics departments to be inspiring and training the next generation it is shortsighted to apply such an arbitrary ratio to decide priorities. Nottingham are currently very well placed to have impact on some of the most important applied science challenges. Cutting opportunities for research as well as student engagement will do significant damage. |
| Professor Nicola S Clayton FRS | University of Cambridge | |
| Prof Cristina Lazzeroni FRS | University of Birmingham, UK | This is is short-sighted and highly damaging to Nottingham University and the whole of UK. Nottingham Physics is one of the most respected and prestigious departments in the country. |
| Prof David Charlton FRS | University of Birmingham | |
| Prof. Nigel Smith FRS | TRIUMF - Canada's particle accelerator centre | Physics underpins the technology and innovation strategies needed in the modern era. Cutting the Nottingham physics department so drastically would seem a short sighted solution to fiscal issues, rather than looking for growth opportunities it may provide. |
| Professor Alan Watson, FRS | University of Leeds | I find the proposal to make so many staff in the Physics Department redundant truly appalling. That it seems to be based on a requirement to have the same student/staff ratio across the University is extraordinary. It suggests that senior management have no understanding as to how physics, a laboratory-based subject, is taught. The need for a high-level of technical support and considerable academic input for laboratory teaching and essential project work in later years cannot be met with the ratio proposed. I would have thought that if this decision is implemented that it is likely that the Institute of Physics would be unable to approve the undergraduate degree program. I urge senior management to reverse this decision. |
| Prof Sheila Rowan CBE FRS | University of Glasgow | |
| Prof. Mark Lancaster FRS | University of Manchester | The logic that has led to this decision is crass, short-sighted and ill-informed. UK productivity and growth requires regional centres of Physics excellence which Nottingham undoubtedly is and has been for decades. This short-term policy will undermine years of long term investment, reduce research and innovation and the quality and number of students at Nottingham. It is a profoundly stupid decision. |
| Prof Sir James Hough FRS | University of Glasgow | It is totally unreasonable to see a school with such a world ranking reputation being treated this way. |
| Prof Stephen Smartt CBE FRS | University of Oxford | The Physics Department at Nottingham has a global reputation that reflects the UK's strength in physics and astronomy. Cutting back on the opportunities for the UK's next generation to take science degrees and become the scientists, teachers, engineers of the future is an act that the University will come to regret. University management should take a hard look at this foolish and short sighted decision, it is a threat to the UK science base not just to colleagues and the students at Nottingham. The University has made serious financial mistakes, it is absurd the consequences should be to hinder the education our future scientists, at a time when we need them most. |
| Prof. Michael Berry FRS | University of Bristol | Saving money in a university by firing academics is like saving weight on a spacecraft by cutting the balls off an astronaut. With creative accounting, there must be another way: selling real estate recently unwisely acquired; reducing the number of administrators, especially top-level staff with high salaries; attracting more Chinese students… |
| Prof Terry Wyatt FRS | University of Manchester | I sincerely hope some way will be found to reverse these cuts. |
| Professor Brian Foster, OBE, HonFInstP, FRS | University of Oxford | |
| Prof Frank Close OBE FRS | Oxford University | The defence of the UK depends on us producing a regular supply of people highly trained in the physical sciences. Nottingham University's threat to solve its financial problems by drastically cutting this field is either a bluff in the hope of forcing a reaction by Government or a total misunderstanding of the subject's strategic role. In any event, as a way to solve financial problems that are at least in part self-created, is assinine. |
| Prof. David L. Wark FRS | University of Oxford | |
| Prof. George Efstathiou FRS | University of Cambridge | Redundancies will damage the reputation of Nottingham for at least a generation. The faculty in Nottingham Physics are world class. If the University imposes redundancies I would not be able to recommend that researchers accept appointments at Nottingham in the future. Staff have chosen to make their academic careers at the University, many in preference to offers from other Universities. They should be offered job security by the University. |
| Prof. Dame Athene Donald FRS | University of Cambridge | |
| Professor Sir Richard Friend, FRS | University of Cambridge | |
| Prof. William Unruh FRS, FRSC, FHM-AAAS, | University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, Hagler Fellow TexasA&M, Humbolt Fellow Founding director, Program in Gravity and Cosmology, CIFAR | It saddens me to have to sign this letter. It reminds me of the DOGE initiative in the USA. Break it and Fix it. Unfortunately the "Fix It" part is like taking a shotgun to your computer in the hopes that the fragments will rearrange themselves into a better computer. |
| Prof. Roger Blandford FRS | Stanford | |
| Michael Cates FRS | University of Cambridge | This threat to irreparably damage one of the UK's strongest physics departments appears to be the consequence of years of institutional mismanagement (mostly preceding the tenure of the current Vice Chancellor). I very much doubt that these cuts are the way to solve the University's financial problems, no matter how severe those are. Indeed, by dramatically undermining the University's academic reputation, it is more likely to make them even worse. |
| Emeritus Prof. Michael Moore FRS | Department of Physics, University of Manchester | In a long career I have witnessed several times the panic reaction of University Administrations faced with the prospect of not even being able to make the monthly payroll. In most cases the philosophy of Mr Micawber is vindicated: something turns up. Usually the best policy is a loan coupled with voluntary redundancy, early retirement, and no hiring right across the entire University for a few years, rather than deep cuts in a few areas. The Nottingham Physics Department is outstanding and deep cuts on it just because its student/staff ratio is typical of that of other large physics departments rather than the higher Nottingham departmental average will result a rapid drop in its research reputation. |
| Prof. Nigel Goldenfeld FRS, US National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences | University of California San Diego | I understand that the errors made by University management, which led to the proposal for redundancies, were overextended expansion of the campus and the fallout from a previous rounds of redundancies. I also searched the salaries of the senior administration of the university and discovered that they are at least 2-4 times that of faculty/staff, probably even more since they get bonuses, and of course there are pension benefits too. As a result, it is clear that the most cost effective firing strategy would be to fire the administrators responsible for this debacle. They caused it, and for every senior administrator fired, the jobs of several staff and faculty are saved. You get more bang for the buck by firing the administrators. And by doing so you do not destroy in the long term the impressive scientific reputation and important teaching and research being done by the excellent physics and astronomy department. |
| Professor Maurice Skolnick FRS | University of Sheffield | The School of Physics and Astronomy at Nottingham has a very high reputation worldwide. It is a national asset and needs to be supported and maintained. |
| Daan Frenkel ForMemRS | University of Cambridge | Physics in Nottingham is among the strongest and most creative in the country. The proposed cuts would be a tragedy. |
| Bernard Schutz FRS NAS | Cardiff University | |
| Ed Hinds FRS | Imperial College London | I am astonished to hear that Nottingham is proposing to slash the School of Physics and Astronomy. This is a key part of the whole University and its closure or substantial reduction would do immeasurable harm to the standing of the University. I am particularly shocked that Clare Burrage and Ed Copeland are at risk of redundancy. These are both world class physicists and international leaders in their field of theoretical physics and cosmology. I do hope that this self-destructive plan can be reversed.. |
| Sir Michael Pepper FREng FRS | UCL | |
| Juan Maldacena. | IAS, Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics 2012 | |
| Surjeet Rajendran | Johns Hopkins, Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics 2017 | The physics department at Nottingham is one of the best departments in the UK with a number of researchers who think outside the box and have had creative and impactful ideas. The university should reconsider this short sighted move - it will make it much harder to recruit top scientists to Nottingham in the future. |
| Prof. Hiranya Peiris | Professorship of Astrophysics (1909) at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics 2018 | As a long-standing collaborator with the School of Physics and Astronomy — through the QSimFP programme in quantum simulation of false vacuum decay, and through deep connections with the cosmology group — I have seen first-hand the exceptional calibre of research and the collaborative environment that Nottingham has built over decades. The proposed redundancies would inflict irreversible damage on a department whose contributions to fundamental physics, from laboratory analogue cosmology to observational and theoretical cosmology and astrophysics, are recognised internationally. At a time when the UK's standing as a reliable research partner is already under strain, this act of institutional self-harm sends a devastating signal. The University's leadership must find an alternative path. |
| Prof Jeremy Mould | Swinburne University. | The people who should be axed are the consultants who advised you to do this. |
| Prof. Sidney Nagel, NAS | The University of Chicago | |
| Prof Sean Carroll | Johns Hopkins University | |
| Prof Chris Lintott | University of Oxford | Nottingham is world leading in physics and astronomy; more than that, the staff have fostered an environment in which students learn an enormous amount, and emerge with skills which will fit them whatever their career turns out to be. This is an exemplar of a department, and threatening it because of administrative problems elsewhere is short sided and, frankly, stupid. |
| Professor Carlo Contaldi MBE | Imperial College London | |
| Immanuel Bloch | LMU Munich and Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (Germany). Stern-Gerlach Medal 2024, Harvey Price 2015, 2013 Koerber-Prize 2013 | |
| Prof John Womersley | University of Edinburgh | I understand that the University finds itself in difficult financial circumstances. Nonetheless, action like this is unjustified, short sighted and highly unlikely to help. It will harm both the university’s reputation and that of the UK as a leading scientific nation. Please reconsider. |
| Prof Juan García-Bellido | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid | Save Nottingham Physics and Astronomy. They don't deserve to pay for other people's faults. |
| Prof John Donoghue | University of Massachusetts, Amherst | |
| Prof. Liam McAllister | Cornell University | |
| Prof Justin Khoury | University of Pennsylvania | |
| Prof Glenn Starkman | Case Western Reserve University | The Department of Physics at Nottingham has a longstanding reputation of excellence that is a point of international distinction that it will be abandoning . The university should of course consider the unjust impact on people who have made the customary bargain with the university of trading long term job security for lower compensation than they would likely have secured in the non-academic sector. Many of them will be of an age where identifying new job opportunities will be challenging. But the university should also consider the impact on its own reputation for breaking its commitment — which promising scholar will choose to place their trust in the institution in the future? |
| Prof. Ryan Cooke | Durham University | Please reconsider your solution to this immediate problem. There are always other solutions that are less drastic, and will still allow the University of Nottingham to succeed into the future. |
| Prof David Tong | University of Cambridge | I am horrified to see this destruction of a world class physics department. Both the research and teaching at Nottingham are exceptional. I wouldn't have had a career in academia if it wasn't for the excellent education I received as an undergraduate on the Mathematical Physics course. It's a short-sighted, idiotic decision that will do enormous damage both to Nottingham and to the wider research environment within the UK. |
| Prof Arttu Rajantie | Imperial College London | Nottingham is a leading UK centre for Physics and Astronomy. These proposed redundancies are deeply short‑sighted and would have lasting negative consequences not only for the University of Nottingham, but for the UK’s scientific strength as a whole. |
| Prof. Peter Jezzard | Oxford University | Nottingham Physics and Astronomy is at the forefront in the world in the area of magnetic resonance imaging (including hosting the National Ultra-High Field Magnetic Resonance Facility and with the legacy of a Nobel Prize for the invention of MRI). This personnel vandalism is shocking. |
| Prof. Lyndsay Fletcher MBE FRSE | University of Glasgow | This threatens irreparable damage to a world-leading School of Physics and Astronomy, hurting many staff and students who have had neither a hand in, nor influence over, the University's current financial woes. It will hurt both the University, and UK physics. Please reconsider. |
| Prof Malcolm Fairbairn | Head of Theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology, King's College London | I find it completely astonishing that Nottingham is considering this. This group contains many world leading cosmologists and particle astrophysicists. Academia does not offer salaries that compete with the private sector, the trade off is supposed to be job security. Moves like this damage the ecosystem of academia across the entire country. |
| Prof. Toby Wiseman | Imperial College | I have had the pleasure of knowing a number of the academic faculty in Nottingham Physics and Astronomy for many years. They are outstanding internationally renowned researchers and have built a brilliant thriving department, that itself has produced many top researchers as its graduates. It is absolutely shameful that the university has mismanaged itself to the point where it is having to make drastic cuts to its most valuable resource -- its academics. Surely there is a more responsible way to proceed that preserves the essence of the university, namely its scholarship? The governing board and senior management should be ashamed of themselves to have reached this point. If they are honourable, they will be the first to resign, although I suspect this will not be the case. |
| Prof J. Miller FInstP, DPhil, Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine Gold Medal Winner 2025 | Aarhus University (Denmark) & University of Oxford. Secretary, Institute of Physics Medical Physics Group | As an academic medical physicist I am acutely aware of the transformative value of fundamental physics to all of us -- in understanding the universe, our world within it, and our own bodies in health and disease. My entire professional career has been spent utilising ideas and technologies from either condensed matter or particle physics that would be considered 'esoteric' or 'useless' by many at the time they were discovered. They are now in lifesaving, meaningful, international clinical trials. Nottingham is a centre of excellence for medical physics and SPMIC in particular is really known the world over. These cuts are bone-headed, short-sighted, and fundamentally will weaken the UK's economy and last remaining "export success stories" – of fantastic science, and fantastic scientists. |
| Professor Alan Heavens FRSE | Head of Imperial Astrophysics, Imperial College | The School of Physics and Astronomy at University of Nottingham is internationally recognised as a centre of excellence, with a terrific record of research from some of the world’s leading scientists. It also plays a vital role in educating scientists, including in strategically important growth areas such as AI and quantum technologies. The cuts proposed would cause huge damage to the reputation of the University and undermine its standing as a leading research institution. If these go ahead, it will become very difficult in future to attract scientists of the current calibre. Who would go there? |
| Prof. Anne Davis | Cambridge University | Nottingham Physics department is a world renowned department. This decision is absolutely shocking and will cause irreversible damage to Nottinghams reputation as one of the leading Universities in the UK. The decision is so shortsighted it’s unbelievable. |
| Prof. Laura Baudis | University of Zurich | |
| Prof. Anthony Challinor | University of Cambridge | |
| Prof. Cliff Burgess | McMaster University & Perimeter Institute | |
| François Bouchet | Institut d'astrophysique de Pris, CNRS & Sorbonne UNiversité | Stop This |
| Prof. Stephen Serjeant | The Open University | Academics working in data-intensive areas such as astrophysics are the future of the university sector and feed the UK's data intensive / machine learning skills pipelines. Cutting academic staff posts damages the long term health of the university, and it is unconscionable that this is driven in turn by past spending on vanity capital projects. |
| Prof. Pauline Barmby | University of Western Ontario | Training in physics and astronomy is the first step in a broad range of technical and non-technical careers. These subjects fire the imagination, draw youth to science, and enable world-changing research. |
| Prof. Marco Raveri | University of Genova | |
| Prof. Jessica Muir | University of Cincinnati | |
| Prof. Christopher Reynolds | University of Maryland College Park | Nottingham has built a superb Physics and Astronomy Department with world-class faculty. This is precious and took time to build - but it is all too easily lost. I urge University leaders to not enter into a round of self-destructive cuts. Keep the seeds of future growth intact! |
| Dr. Peter Millington | University of Manchester | In addition to training high-calibre physicists who have and continue to contribute to a huge range of sectors, the University of Nottingham’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and its researchers remain at the very forefront of modern science. This is the department that gave us the MRI scanner. And the department that gave us the internationally well-known Sixty Symbols videos, which continue to attract young people into STEMM subjects. The university leadership's decision to turn its back on this legacy, on its staff and students, and to demolish world-leading departments and research groups is utterly wanton. |
| Prof Jean Alexandre | King's College London | |
| Dr Hannah Wakeling | University of Oxford | |
| Dr. Elena Gramellini | University of Manchester | |
| Prof Richard Easther | U of Auckland | |
| Prof. Gary Shiu | University of Wisconsin-Madison | |
| Holger Mueller | UC Berkeley | It seems that this is really shortsighted. The short-term benefit is a few bob to mend the holes created by ill-advised expansion plans. The long-term damage is ruining a world-renowned department, which will make it harder, not easier, to raise funds, and enroll students. |
| Ignacio Cirac | Max-Planck Institute of Quantum Optics. Wolf Prize 2013 | I fully support the document |
| Dr Jim Dobson | King’s College London | |
| Dr Seshadri Nadathur | University of Portsmouth | |
| Prof Jonathan Pritchard | Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy | |
| Prof. Philippe Brax | Ipht paris saclay | Speechless. Thinking of you all |
| Dr Christopher Berry | University of Glasgow | Nottingham is well recognised as a leading institution, with positions at the Centre of Gravity highly sought after. Destroying fundamental research capability today eliminates the progress of the future. |
| Dr Laura Wolz | University of Manchester | |
| Dr. Elizabeth Taylor | University of Edinburgh | |
| Prof Luigi Del Debbio | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr. Mireia Montes | Institute of Space Sciences, Spain | |
| Dr Michael Tremmel | University College Cork | |
| Prof Djuna Croon | Durham University | |
| Dr. Arthur Loureiro | Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm University | |
| Dr Brian Patton | University of Strathclyde | |
| Prof Roman Zwicky | Edinburgh University | Disregarding the injustice, this makes no sense and should be stopped at a higher level. Universities are part of a functioning state and should not be put at risk like this. |
| Prof. Jon Butterworth | University College London | |
| Dr Hossam Aly | TU Delft | |
| Dr Philipp Schicho | University of Geneva | |
| Dr Sophie Renner | University of Glasgow | |
| Prof. Jonathan Nichols | University of Leicester | |
| Dr Jack Fannon | University of Sheffield | |
| Lucien Heurtier | King's College London | The physicists I know from the University of Nottingham are some of the most brilliant early universe cosmology and astroparticle physics experts in the UK and many are now at risk of losing their jobs. This situation is unbearable, not only for the University of Nottingham but also for the long-term capability of UK research and innovation. |
| Dr Steffen Gielen | University of Sheffield | |
| Dr Matej Bajec | University of Ljubljana | |
| Prof Eugene Lim | King’s College London | |
| Dr. Alexander Vikman | CEICO, Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences | I hope the annihilation of one of the UK’s best physics departments is not implemented! |
| Prof Ross Galloway | University of Edinburgh | This decision must be reconsidered: the proposed staff-student ratio is wholly unrealistic and would inevitably lead to impaired student experience and damage to Nottingham's national and international reputation. |
| Prof Kari Rummukainen | University of Helsinki | |
| Dr. Markus Pössel | Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, and Haus der Astronomie | These plans are highly concerning. Astronomy is well-known as a "gateway science" motivating students to dive deeper into STEM subjects. In an age where it is ever more important to interpret real-world data realistically (and also to check up on AI results, which always require checking by competent humans) it seems shortsighted to reduce efforts in this field. |
| Dr Willem Vanderlinden | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Bob Mann | University of Edinburgh | |
| Júlia Silva | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Anton Ilderton | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Mike Newton | University of Edinburgh | |
| Prof Beth Biller | University of Edinburgh | |
| Prof Steven Tobias | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Mao Zeng | University of Edinburgh | |
| James Fawcett | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Sean McMahon | University of Edinburgh | |
| Prof Ken Rice | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Einan Gardi | University of Edinburgh | |
| Prof Matthew Needham | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Rakhi Mahbubani | Rudjer Boskovic Institute | |
| Dr Eric Tittley | Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh | I want to bring to the attention of the University of Nottingham executive two points they seem to have misunderstood. 1) in the field of Astrophysics, the University of Nottingham is respected the world over. Their research output exceeds expectations for an institute of its class. Its students are valued in their competence and originality. If you want to focus on Strengths, then turn your attention to boosting the department, not hurting it. 2) Astrophysics as a field of study is a hoover for attracting innovated and brilliant minds and naturally converting them into productive employees with the highly-desired skills in data science, computer science, project management, and AI that many critical sectors are seeking; Astronomy and Physics making data science a way of life, not just a way to a job. |
| Dr. Latham Boyle | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Trent Dupuy | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Benjamin Wynne | University of Edinburgh | Academics can make a university without buildings. Buildings cannot make a university without academics. |
| Dr. Justin Feng | CEICO, FZU - Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Science | |
| Prof Jennifer Smillie | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Saminathan Ramakrishnan | University of Edinburgh | No to redundancy. |
| Prof Tara Shears | University of Liverpool | |
| Prof Jeff Forshaw | Head of Particle Theory - University of Manchester | |
| Prof. Richard Ball FRSE FInstP | University of Edinburgh | This makes no sense. |
| Dr Mark R J Williams | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Sam Woodford | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Benjamin Giblin | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Jorinde van de Vis | CERN | |
| Ottavia Truttero | University of Edinburgh | |
| Prof. Alkistis Pourtsidou | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Rene Meyer | Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg | |
| Dr Joanna Barstow | The Open University | |
| Dr Thomas Zlosnik | University of Gdańsk | The University of Nottingham is a world leader in research in gravitation and cosmology and should be supported. Furthermore, the wider community of theoretical physics has benefited from the enormous outreach success of the University of Nottingham's researchers participation in the 'Sixty Symbols' series of videos, and I feel this should be recognized as something of great value. |
| Prof Federico Urban | CEICO, Prague, Czech Republic | |
| Eleni Tsiakaliari | The Open University | |
| Adam Koval | Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr. Alessandra Candian | University of Amsterdam | |
| Ippocratis Saltas | IOP, Czech Academy of Sciences | |
| Dr Hugh Dickinson | The Open University | |
| Dr Lea Ferellec | Northumbria University | |
| Prof Christopher Conselice | University of Manchester | These plans are shortsighted and not at all thought out by management at Nottingham and should be stopped. The damage done by these redundancies will make the physics department a shadow of the strong and world leading school which it is today, negatively affecting world leading research projects and the training and teaching of generations of students. |
| Dr Louise Dash | University College London | |
| Professor Martin Haehnelt | University of Cambridge | I echo the comments by Professors Fairbairn and Peacock. |
| Professor Elias Vagenas | Kuwait University | |
| Dr Emma Buchanan | University of Edinburgh | |
| Despoina Farakou | Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences | |
| Dr Lori-Ann Foley | Open University | |
| Dr. Rodrigo Calderon | Institute of Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences | |
| Prof Donal O'Connell | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Thejas A Nair | IIT Mandi | |
| Dr. Anthonin Delphan | Durham University | |
| Prof. Ifan Hughes | Durham University | I was an External Examiner at Nottingham Physics&Astronomy a decade ago. I was very impressed with both the quality of the degree programme and the concern the staff showed for the education and wellbeing of the students. |
| Prof Alexander Murphy | University of Edinburgh | |
| Prof. Matt Hilton | University of the Witwatersrand | |
| Dr Yuri Shtanov | Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kiev, Ukraine | |
| Dr Fernando Buitrago | University of Valladolid (Spain) / Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences (Portugal) | Ex-Phd student from the University of Nottingham |
| Dr Mark Hodgkinson | University of Sheffield | |
| Dr Kristin Lohwasser | University of Sheffield | |
| Dr. Swagat Saurav Mishra | Centre for Theoretical Physics of the Universe (CTPU-CGA), Institute for Basic Sciences, Daejeon | |
| Dr Benoit Laurent | Perimeter Institute | |
| Dr. Teppei Katori | King's College London | |
| Dr. Katherine Inskip | The University of Sheffield | |
| Dr. Leonardo Ferreira | University of Victoria | This threat is mindblowing to me given that the department is among the best in the world. Not only that, but it is also a pioneer in multidisciplinary research, including artificial intelligence, which is one of the new backbones to our society. The cohort of 2022 PhDs for example (when I got my PhD) , has dozens of AI experts now leading in the industry and at the bleeding edge of technology. Really shows the disconnect between the administration and the staff. |
| Dr Alex Summerfield | University of Manchester | |
| Dr Graham Brown | University of Edinburgh | |
| Pranavi Hiremath | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Massimiliano Rinaldi | University of Trento | |
| Prof David R Klassen | Rowan University | Physics and astronomy are foundational; if you don't have the, you don't have engineering. |
| Dr Oliver Dudgeon | University of Edinburgh | As a University of Nottingham School of Physics & Astronomy alumnus, it is terrible to see the university taking these actions. The staff at the university are world-class, and this action will only lead to further problems. |
| Dr Boris Haeussler | ESO | |
| Dr Dibya Chakraborty | IISER TVM | |
| Dr Mark Mitchison | King’s College London | I’m shocked to see this being considered at such a nationally recognised and impactful physics department. It’s an incredibly shortsighted move by the university which will seriously damage its reputation and its ability to attract students in the long term. |
| Anand Hegde | National Tsing Hua University | This is ridiculous. I can’t even believe that this is even being imagined. |
| Isaac Holst | University of Edinburgh | |
| George Parish | Kings College London | It’s completely horrifying that Nottingham, the university where I did my undergraduate study is considering cutting such a huge proportion of the department. The academics in the physics department do world leading research and the effective teaching of undergraduates will be impossible under such a significantly reduced headcount. |
| Prof Marek Schoenherr | Durham University | It is striking that the UoN Executive Board and Council continue to act against best practices and advice from both within and without the university. They have maneuvered the university into this position and try to fix it by sacrificing their scientific heart, their excellence in teaching, and, most of all, the livelihood of their many talented researchers and teachers. Because without a doubt, even those staff not being sacked will not be able to teach and research with the peace of mind necessary to pursue this calling at the highest standards, and will, before long, look for better opportunities elsewhere. Heartbreaking. |
| Prof Cristóbal Sifón | Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaiso (Chile) | |
| Dario Lorenzoni | University of Manitoba | |
| Dr Miguel Montero | IFT UAM-CSIC | |
| Dr Gonzalo Villa | University of Cambridge | |
| Dr. Björn Hassfeld | University of Wisconsin Madison | |
| Gonzalo Fernández Casas | Instituto de Física teórica (IFT, Madrid) | |
| Dr Bruno Valeixo Bento | IFT UAM-CSIC | |
| Joy Gong | University of Cambridge | |
| Alessandro Borys | University of Catania | |
| Dr Anna Negro | Case Western Reserve University | |
| Dr George Alestas | Institute of Theoretical Physics, IFT | |
| Mikel Martin Barandiaran | Instituto de Fisica Teorica IFT UAM-CSIC | |
| Prof Aldo Lorenzo Cotrone | Florence University, Italy | |
| Dr Georges Obied | University of Chicago | |
| Lucas Vicente Garcia-Consuegra | King’s College London | |
| Michelangelo Tartaglia | IFT Madrid | |
| Dr Rodrigo Alonso | Durham University | |
| Dr Guoen Nian | Peking University | |
| Prof. Astrid Eichhorn | Heidelberg University | |
| Dr Andrius Tamosiunas | University of Oslo | |
| Prof Timm Wrase | Lehigh University | |
| Dr Priya Goyal | KIAS, Seoul | |
| Panagiotis Giannadakis | King's College London | |
| Indira Ocampo | IFT UAM-CSIC | |
| Dr Mario Reig Lopez | CERN | |
| Prof Marco Scalisi | University of Catania | |
| Dr Savvas Nesseris | Institute for theoretical physics IFT UAM/CSIC | |
| Prof David Wands | University of Portsmouth | |
| Dr Flavio Tonioni | University of Padua | |
| Dr Jacques Delabrouille | CNRS | |
| Dr David Weir | University of Helsinki | I was an Ernest Rutherford Fellow at Nottingham, and so I recognise first-hand the impact that this will have on the department; I probably even know some of the people whose jobs are under threat. As the petition states, I personally believe that this will have the perverse effect of making Nottingham’s Physics and Astronomy department less sustainable in the long run. It seems to me that similar processes at other universities in the UK have rarely helped to actually make the threatened department more viable. Nearly fifty years ago, the first viable MRI machine was developed at Nottingham. Let’s not risk getting to the point where we only speak of its achievements in physics and astronomy in the past tense. |
| Dr Salvatore Raucci | IFT Madrid | |
| Dr Veronica Collazuol | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid | |
| Prof. Gustavo Niz | University of Guanajuato | |
| Dr Pedro Fernandes | Heidelberg University | |
| Dr John Carlton | DESY | |
| Dr. Ignacio Ruiz | CERN | |
| Cristóbal Zenteno Gatica | IFT Madrid | |
| Dr. Andriana Makridou | Instituto de Física Teórica UAM-CSIC | |
| Dr. Steven Wrathmall | Durham University | |
| Dr Sean McGee | University of Birmingham | |
| Dr. Ananda Bauer | Yerkes Observatory | |
| Prof. Matthew Jones | Durham University | This is short-term madness. Nottingham is recognised globally for its excellence in physics. What is lost here will never be recovered, and the risk to Nottingham's reputation as a STEM leader would be catastrophic. |
| Dr. Vasiliki A. Mitsou | IFIC - CSIC / Univ. Valencia - Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics 2025 | |
| Dr Ramkishor Sharma | School of Physics, University of Hyderabad | |
| Professor Marek Szablewski | Durham University | |
| Dr Arianna Cortesi | UFRJ | |
| Evan Jones | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Stefano De Angelis | Institut de Physique Theorique | |
| Dr Alejo N. Rossia | University of Padua | |
| Dr Yara Jaffé | Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria | Nottingham is a reference in physics and astronomy globally. This is catastrophic |
| Dr Filippo Revello | KU Leuven | |
| Dr Mikel Sanchez Garitaonandia | University College Dublin | |
| Prof Peter Coles | NUI Maynooth | |
| Prof Ross McLure | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr David J. E. Marsh | King's College London | |
| Dr. Øyvind Christiansen | Institute of Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences | |
| Prof Judith Croston | The Open University | |
| Prof. Mike Hudson | University of Waterloo | |
| Dr. Vitor Medeiros Sampaio | Universidad técnica Federico Santa María | This is outrageous! |
| Dr Ken Mimasu | University of Southampton | |
| Prof Avery Meiksin | University of Edinburgh | You could hardly dream up a better academic own goal. |
| Dr. Masahide Yamaguchi | Institute for Basic Science | |
| Dr Adam Carnall | Edinburgh University | |
| Prof Jon Loveday | University of Sussex | This is shocking, and no way to treat a highly-respected department. |
| Professor Kristen Coppin | University of Hertfordshire | I am privileged to have known and worked with several colleagues in extragalactic astrophysics at Nottingham, including external examination of some excellent PhD candidates there, and it is one of the premier astronomy groups in the UK and this would be an immense loss and incredibly damaging to the UK's world-leading reputation in the field. Has senior management thought about the consequences of these actions to current PhD research students there losing key members of their supervisory teams - meaning they would be unlikely to be able to complete their degrees? PhD projects are highly specialised and supervision is highly unlikely to be something that can simply be handed over to other colleagues. |
| Dr Aine O'Brien | University of Glasgow | |
| Prof Paul O'Brien | University of Leicester | |
| Dr Bogdan Ganchev | Johns Hopkins University | |
| Prof Stephen Eales | Cardiff University | |
| Dr Megan Brown | University of Cambridge | |
| Professor Daniel Mortlock | Imperial College London | |
| Prof Debora Sijacki | Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge | |
| Dr Sally Shaw | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Sebastian Bahamonde | Institute for Basic Science | |
| Dr Timothy Davis | Cardiff University | |
| Dr Manuela Magliocchetti | INAF | |
| Atabak Fathe Jalali | FZU, CEICO | |
| Dr Emilio Pisanty | King's College London | |
| Sofia Steinmetz | Copenhagen University | |
| Dr Mathew Smith | Lancaster University | |
| Jonah Powley | University of Cambridge | Having recently studied my undergraduate degree in Physics at Nottingham, I can confidently say that the staff who taught me were foundational to my growth and development as a researcher. It was be an immense loss and injustice for the staff who were such excellent teachers to be unfairly punished by being made redundant. |
| Prof. Michael Merrifield | University of Nottingham (retired) | Having had the privilege to lead this truly outstanding school, I am appalled by the intellectual vandalism of destroying it based on metrics as absurd and meaningless as staff-student ratios. |
| Dr Kenneth Duncan | University of Edinburgh | Nottingham Astronomy PhD |
| Victor Maura Breick | King’s College London | |
| Dr Paola Delgado | CEICO - FZU | |
| Dr Konstantinos A. Petridis | University of Bristol | Proposed redundancies at a leading UK centre for Physics and Astronomy raise serious questions about the University of Nottingham's commitment to research and teaching excellence. |
| Dr Robert Mason | RWTH Aachen University | |
| Prof. Antony Lewis | University of Sussex | |
| Dr Chris Frohmaier | University of Portsmouth | |
| Dr Jim Brooke | University of Bristol | |
| Dr. Jennifer Rittenhouse West | INFN Turin and University of Turin | |
| Alexis Verney-Provatas | The University of Edinburgh/Swansea University | |
| Dr Veronika Dornan | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr. Dr Ajay Kaladharan | ICTP-AP Beijing | |
| Dr Pratika Dayal | Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics | |
| Prof. Garret Cotter | University of Oxford | The University appears to be underestimating the opportunity cost of these proposals. It may hope to absorb the immediate criticism and move on, but the long-term reputational damage will be much harder to contain. A physics department’s reputation is built over decades through staff, students, research leadership, and international trust; it can be damaged very quickly by actions that signal instability and a lack of commitment to excellence. When advising A-level students on where to apply, Nottingham’s strong reputation in physics has been one of the reasons I have recommended it. I would no longer feel able to do so with confidence if these redundancies go ahead. Prospective students and their families do notice these decisions. The same applies to recruitment at the highest research level. Major grant-holders, including ERC-level researchers, will not choose to move to an institution that appears willing to dismantle a successful department and expose a large fraction of its staff to compulsory redundancy. The short-term savings may be visible on a spreadsheet, but the lost students, lost grants, lost staff, and lost trust will be much more costly in the long run. |
| Prof. Anupam Mazumdar | Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics & University of Groningen | I strongly urge the University management to help our excellent colleagues, scientists, whose contributions are invaluable, and please do everything to keep the jobs intact. |
| Dr Antonio Smecca | INFN - Sezione di Roma Tre | |
| Prof. Christoph Englert | University of Manchester | |
| Dr. Syed Nasrullah | University of Management and Technology | |
| Prof Graham Smith | University of Birmingham | |
| Dr Matthew Burleigh | University of Leicester | |
| Prof. Vivienne Wild | University of St Andrews | When the country and world is crying out for numerically literate problem solvers, and well-trained physics & astronomy graduates are highly sought after for a wide range of technical careers, this seems a very short sighted solution to financial problems that do not appear to relate in any way to the Physics & Astronomy department in Nottingham. |
| Prof. Natalie Hinkel | Louisiana State University | These cuts are short-sighted and debilitating, not only for the faculty who would lose their jobs, but for the students who would be unable to take classes, get crucial research experience, and/or obtain important career training. Physics & Astronomy departments are often the powerhouses of universities because of their widespread impact on other fields/departments as well as their ability to win national grants. Making these cuts would ultimately weaken the strength of the university and should not be undertaken. |
| Dr Chris Bouchard | University of Glasgow | |
| Linus Thummel | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Saurabh Nath | University of Pennsylvania | |
| Dr Emma Puranen | The Open University | I was an invited speaker for the Nottingham astronomy group in 2025, and I saw a vibrant department full of expertise and drive. These are the researchers and students we need in the modern world, and I am appalled by the idea of imposing redundancies on them. |
| Prof. Mathew Madhavacheril | University of Pennsylvania | |
| Dr Simon Williams | Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology | |
| Dr. Dan Ryczanowski | University of Portsmouth | |
| Dr Gregorio Carullo | University of Birmingham | |
| Dr Rachel Handforth | Nottingham Trent University | |
| Prof. Adam Lidz | University of Pennsylvania | |
| Prof Stefano Giorgini | University of Trento | |
| Dr Martin Bauer | Durhan University | |
| Prof. Jessica Turner | Durham University | |
| Dr Drew Backhouse | King’s College London | |
| Cosmo Sallusti | UCL | |
| Prof. Steven Abel | Durham IPPP | |
| Dr Fedja Orucevic | University of Sussex | |
| Prof. Elizabeth McGrath | Colby College | |
| Dr Ben Gompertz | University of Birmingham | |
| Dr Kajal Singh | University of Liverpool | |
| Dr. Arturo de Giorgi | Durham University | |
| Dr Ciaran O'Hare | University of Sydney | |
| Dr Anna Lisa Varri | University of Edinburgh | |
| Professor Kathy Romer | University of Sussex | |
| Dr. Rajiv Krishnakumar | Quantum Basel | |
| Prof. Gary Bernstein | University of Pennsylvania | |
| Prof Andrea Liu | University of Pennsylvania | |
| Dr. Bohan Yue | University of Oxford | |
| Dr. Miguel Crispim Romao | Durham University / Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology | |
| Dr. Mikhail Kuzovnikov | University of Edinburgh | The University officials involved in the Castle Meadow decisions should be identified and sacked instead of sacking the research staff. It will save more money on the possible vanity projects in the future |
| Prof Alastair Edge | Durham University | My colleagues in Nottingham include some of my longest and most valued collaborators over my four decades of research. They are each individually world-leading in their field and collectively responsible for teaching, mentoring and inspiring many generations of young scientists. My own son was captivated by the Sixty Symbols team and is completing his PhD in Chemistry now. To contemplate this act of academic vandalism is unconscionable. |
| Prof. Valya Khoze | IPPP Durham University | Full support for colleagues at Nottingham’s excellent Physics and Astronomy department. |
| Dr. Anton Olsson | Durham University | |
| Dr Tevong You | King's College London | |
| Dr. Pooja Gupta | University of Oxford | |
| Prof Vasily Belokurov | Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge | Compulsory redundancy is a devastating outcome for staff, their families, students, and the wider academic community. It undermines trust, damages morale, and weakens the institution at the very moment when collective effort and shared responsibility are most needed. Financial difficulties in universities must not be addressed through crude and abrupt announcements that present staff with a fait accompli. Staff should be meaningfully involved at the earliest stages in understanding the scale of the problem, scrutinising the evidence, and developing credible alternatives. Those who teach, research, support students, and sustain the daily life of the university have the experience and commitment needed to help find solutions. |
| Dr Ravi K Sheth | University of Pennsylvania | |
| Ery McPartland | IPPP, University of Durham | |
| Dr Francesca Chadha-Day | Durham University | |
| Professor Glenn Patrick | University of Portsmouth | |
| Prof Jeppe R. Andersen | University of Durham | |
| Dr Michael Kuhn | University of Hertfordshire | |
| Dr. Sergio Sevillano Muñoz | University of Pennsylvania | |
| Dr. Robyn Sanderson | University of Pennsylvania | I'd like to highlight the large number of eminent signatories on this list! I echo their support of an excellent department and deplore the short-sightedness of this decision. |
| Juan Rajagopal | Imperial College London | |
| Prof. Eloy Ayón-Beato | Cinvestav | |
| Dr. David Tsang | University of Bath | |
| Dr David Mason | Jülich Forchungszentrum | |
| Prof. Daniel Maitre | Durham University | |
| Prof. Poshak Gandhi | University of Southampton | Astronomy is one of the most inspiring and compelling gateways into STEM. Decimating an internationally recognised team of research and technical staff would mean not only losing talent now, but also handicapping the next generation of scientific leaders. Alternative cost-saving measures should be prioritised to protect research and teaching excellence, as well as the institution's wider reputation. |
| Clelia Altomonte | King's College London | |
| Dr Fouzia Ouali | Nottingham Trent University | As a former PhD student and member of staff of the Department, and as the parent of a current final year physics student in the Department, I am horrified by the scale of the proposed cuts and their impact on world-class staff and their livelihoods. These measures would severely diminish the Department's standing as a centre of research excellence and weaken the quality of its teaching provision. |
| Dr Adam Hansen | Northumbria University | Solid-state-arity! |
| Dr Thomas Stanton | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Benjamin Knorr | Heidelberg University | |
| Parth Bhargava | University of Portsmouth | |
| Dr David L Clements | Imperial College London | Academic staff should not be punished for the failures of senior administrators. Go after your exVC for misconduct instead |
| Dr. Sveva Castello | Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics | |
| Prof. Christos Charmousis | CNRS, Paris-Saclay University | It is widely recognised in our research community that the Physics and Astronomy department at the University of Nottingham is among the top institutions in the UK and worldwide. Personally, it has always been my preferred place to conduct my research, and I have been fortunate enough to interact with many members of the department through endless scientific discussions, article research and writing, seminars, PhD reports etc. All the numerous personnel I have had the chance to interact with over the years are exceptionally talented and dedicated researchers. It is remarkable to think that one would consider reducing the outstanding staff of such a prestigious establishment. It is truly disappointing that misguided policies and political misconduct from the past are jeopardizing the future of research in the UK. Logic dictates that it should be exactly the opposite. |
| Prof Gert Aarts FLSW | Swansea University | Makes no sense of course |
| Prof Wyn Evans | University of Cambridge | It is governance failure, misuse of funds & breach of fiduciary duties at Nottingham University. A proper investigation is needed as to how the University ended up in this state. |
| Dr Matteo Marcoli | University of Durham | |
| Dr. Alexandre Adler | UC Berkeley | The proposed cuts at Nottingham are a result of bad planning for its business school, yet they are imposed on all other departments. They are due to the incompetence of previous senior leadership, yet fall on staff and academics. The University failed to attract extra students, yet punishes departments with low staff/students ratios, those that bring considerable research income. In short, Nottingham is about to gut itself to treat a serious, but not life-threatening, financial incident. I would advise the administrators to ask the Faculty of Medicine what the prognosis is for the gutted before committing to those cuts. |
| Anna Taylor | University of York | This department is incredible and so important for the future of physics, astrophysics, and sciences alike. |
| Prof. Ralph Wijers | University of Amsterdam | |
| Prof Brooke Simmons | Lancaster University | Nottingham Physics and Astronomy has earned, and continues to earn, an outstanding worldwide reputation for excellence. Even if they had not had such success in advancing research, securing research funding, and training the next generation of technically fluent people, I would vehemently oppose the senseless destruction of so many careers. However, the fact that the university is seeking to wreck this School is worth highlighting: it shows how incompetent the senior university management must be. Anyone who thinks that destroying the short- and long-term prospects of a demonstrably successful programme will lead to a positive outcome for the university ought to be the ones to be sacked. Of course, blinkered senior management will never voluntarily make themselves redundant. So, I hope that the local and national unions will come together and fight this. We are with you. |
| Dr Robert Potvliege | Durham University | |
| Dr Pavel Buividovich | University of Liverpool | |
| Dr George Pappas | Aristotle University of Thessaloniki | |
| Professor Adam Ganz | Royal Holloway University of London | It is absolutely insane to destroy a leading physics department becaquse of the incompetence of previous university management - I note that both the VC and the registrar whose decisions have led tot he current financial instability now hold highly paid roles elsewhere |
| Dr Stefan Schacht | Durham University | |
| Dr Guilherme Pimentel | Scuola Normale Superiore | |
| Dr Alexios Christopoulos | Institut "Jožef Stefan" | |
| Dr Elsa Teixeira | LUPM, Université de Montpellier | |
| Dr Jack Hart | Sheffield Hallam University | I obtained my undergraduate degree and PhD from Nottingham. As someone who was unsure University would be for them at the start of the former, the staff (both academic and technical) in the School of Physics and Astronomy made me feel welcome and supported. The School's ability to do this for their students, alongside their outstanding research activity and culture, highlight just how nonsensical the proposed jobs cuts by University management are. |
| Dr Roberto De Propris | University of Turku | |
| Prof Jonathan Heckman | University of Pennsylvania | |
| Dr. Sarah Rugheimer | University of Edinburgh | |
| Professor Peter G Martin, OC, FRSC, FRCGS | Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto | Reaching the high level of international excellence in Physics and Astronomy has been a real achievement by dedicated and talented staff over decades. The proposed redundancies would wipe this out to devastating effect, with not only reputational damage to the University (the world is indeed looking askance) but also lost opportunities for students and staff in these core STEM disciplines to contribute to meeting the existential challenges facing humanity. |
| Dr Kate Rowlands | Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore (STScI) | These cuts to physics and astronomy (and science in general) would devastate a world-leading department (ex Nottingham PhD, 2013), and are completely backwards in a time when investment in science is needed now more than ever, in our technology-driven world. |
| Grace Smith | Durham University | Without the research staff in the physics department, an entire generation of physicists will be lost due to the inevitable drop in teaching and research standards that will happen when the remaining staff are spread too thinly. |
| Prof Joachim Kopp | U. Mainz | Cutting physics at a time when the world's most challenging problems (climate change) and some of humankind's greatest technological opportunities (e.g. quantum tech) relate to physics seems very unwise to say it politely. |
| Dr Elisa Todarello | University of California, Berkeley | |
| Prof. Martin Gorbahn | University of Liverpool | |
| Prof Tanmay Vachaspati | Arizona State University | The physics department at UoN has world-class staff doing excellent science. |
| Isabel Clennell | The Christie NHS Foundation Trust | A substantial proportion of the country's medical physicists, who are required to ensure millions of people receive safe and effective treatment and diagnostics every year, studied or trained at Nottingham. Whether that be for an undergraduate or postgraduate degree, their experiences set them on that path and gave them the skills and experience to help prepare them for such a career. For me, if I hadn't enjoyed my time throughout my degree and my time doing research at the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre at the university, I wouldn't be where I am now, working in radiotherapy physics. Both of these experiences would have been impacted if there were reduced staffing levels, as the academic staff would simply be stretched too thin to deliver strong teaching, whilst inspiring us through their research work, and providing pastoral support. Secondly, UoN Physics has a very strong online presence that draws in many students. If the staff who participated in this leave, then the appeal to applicants will reduce, and if retained staff have reduced time for outreach, then this will also directly impact the profile of the university. |
| Prof. Andrew Anstey | University of Ottawa | This is as shortsighted a move one could possibly imagine for a program such as Nottingham's. |
| Prof Andrew Bunker | University of Oxford | |
| Prof. Boryana Hadzhiyska | University of Cambridge | |
| Prof. Chris Byrnes | University of Sussex | Shocking news. Nottingham is truly one of the best and loveliest cosmology groups in the world which I have been fortunate to visit numerous times. |
| Prof. Elias Brinks | Associate Director Doctoral College, University of Hertfordshire | |
| William G. Lamb | Vanderbilt University | Stop dismantling British physics and astronomy research |
| Prof. Will Percival | University of Waterloo | |
| Prof. Romeel Dave | University of Edinburgh | |
| Prof. Reynier Peletier | University of Groningen | A shame to see these cuts. The physics department, and definitely the astronomy group, is among the best in the UK. I used to be part of it 25 years ago. |
| Dr. Hakan Cetin | Izmir Institiute of Technology | |
| Dr John Ilee | University of Leeds | |
| Dr Cristiana Tisca | University of Oxford | |
| Dr. Ameek Malhotra | Swansea University | |
| Professor Joseph Conlon | University of Oxford | |
| Dr. Aranya Bhattacharya | University of Bristol | |
| Dr. Ana Chies Santos | Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) - Brazil | former Postdoc (2011-2014) |
| Prof. Andreas Korn | UCL | Physics graduates drive advances in data intensive science. Cutting physics at a well respected institution like Nottingham takes away important pathways for young people to make important future contributions to the prosperity of the region. |
| Prof. Armando Gil de Paz | Universidad Complutense de Madrid | I am not sure whether any decision-maker will ever read this, but dismantling such a successful and high-impact Astrophysics department would be a profoundly short-sighted decision. Research excellence is not something that can be rebuilt overnight once lost. |
| Dr Julie Wardlow | Lancaster University | |
| Prof Sara Ellison | University of Victoria | This single catastrophic move will cause irrevocable damage to one of the most highly respected departments in the country. |
| Dr Marco Fabus | University of Oxford | |
| Dr Simone Scaringi | Durham University | |
| Dr Shane OSullivan | IPARCOS Universidad Complutense de Madrid | |
| Dr Wojciech Kopec | Queen Mary University of London | |
| Prof. Andrew Pontzen | University of Durham | Nottingham physics and astronomy has a well-deserved international reputation for the highest standards of excellence. Thinking of everyone affected by this disastrous misstep. |
| Asier Lambarri Martinez | Universidad Complutense de Madrid | |
| Indumita Prakash | University of Oxford | |
| Dr. Bianca Maria Poggianti | INAF-Astronomical Observatory of Padova, Director | The School of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Nottingham is world-renowned for the outstanding research and teaching quality of its staff. The proposed plan for redundancies would be an extremely short-sighted act that would damage not only the School and the whole University, but also British excellence in astrophysics. The colleagues in Nottingham have my strongest support and I urge those in charge to reconsider such an unjustifiable decision. |
| Dr Ottavio Croze | Newcastle University | |
| Dr. Eric Peng | NSF NOIRLab | This department's world-leading scientists have, for decades, educated and trained Nottingham students, giving them unique experiences at the frontiers of science. The proposed cuts would be an unprecedented and shortsighted destruction of academic capital in a field that is foundational for technological and societal development. |
| Dr Claire Greenwell | Durham University | |
| Prof Mathilde Jauzac | Durham University / IRAP | |
| Morgan Mitchell | University of Oxford | |
| Dr Owain Salter Fitz-Gibbon | Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge | |
| Prof Varun Sahni | IUCAA | |
| Prof Rita Tojeiro | University of St Andrews | The Astronomy group at Nottingham is a powerhouse in extragalactic science that remains unmatched in the UK. A cut such as that proposed would be astoundingly shortsighted, and an unquestionable loss to the University. I've had the privilege of working closely with the Physics department as their UG external examiner for the last 4 years, and I can attest to the quality of their degree and the extraordinary commitment of staff to their students. The contribution of the world-leading research programme at Nottingham to the curriculum is also clear and inspiring. It is difficult for me to comprehend the lack of capacity of the University's leadership to recognise the gem they have in this department, and its contribution to the city, the Midlands, and the UK. |
| Dr Nicola Masetti | INAF-OAS, Bologna, Italy | |
| Dr Anna Chrysostomou | Sorbonne Université - LPTHE | |
| Dr Paolo Serra | INAF | |
| Riccardo Caleno | Sapienza University of Rome | |
| Dr. Davide Ricci | INAF - Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica | Standing with Nottingham physicist and astronomers! |
| Dr Simone Zaggia | INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova | |
| Prof Baojiu Li | Durham University | |
| Prof. Ruben Saakyan | University College London | Cutting one of the UK’s leading Physics departments is extraordinary short-termism. The UK university sector contributes close to 10% of national GDP, comparable to major sectors such as construction and financial services. It is among Britain’s greatest cultural, strategic and economic assets. Dismantling world-class physics departments is not strategy, it is vandalism. |
| Dr Stephen Jones (Associate Prof/ RS URF) | IPPP, Durham University | Absolutely shocking and ill thought through plan that will have severe and long standing negative consequences for the reputation of the University. The Nottingham School of Physics and Astronomy is an outstanding group with influential ties to the UK and International physics community. They are an asset to both Nottingham and the UK with strong research output, a well respected degree programme and an exceptional talent for public outreach, watched by over a million people and inspiring the next generation to enter STEM. At a time when the UK government has made a few missteps with STFC funding, with some indications they intend to put this right, this is precisely the wrong moment for a University to be sending the message that it is willing to more than decimate such a strong and important department. Shameful. |
| Dr Martin Dominik | University of St Andrews | |
| Prof. Sanjay Manohar | University of Oxford | It is of critical importance that the University produces funds to support this department. |
| Dr James Ingoldby | Durham University | |
| Dr Sandro Bardelli | INAF | in support to Nottingham School of Physics and Astronomy |
| Prof. Carlton Baugh | Durham University | Amongst many other collaborations with Durham, Nottingham Physics & Astronomy has been a long term (20 years) and much valued partner in a series of EU funded networks, attracting researchers from all over the world. |
| Dr Christopher McCabe | King’s College London | |
| Dr Scilla Degl'Innocenti | Physics Department, Pisa University | |
| Dr Emiliano Merlin | INAF | |
| Dr Roberto Mignani | INAF | I have worked 8 years in the UK and I very well appreciate the renown reputation of the group, which I support totally |
| Prof Marisa Girardi | University of Trieste | |
| Prof. Pierluigi Monaco | University of Trieste (Italy) | Science is always a good investment for society, only a myopic management of resources can include cutting science as a viable option |
| Yixuan Li | University of Padua | |
| Sambit Kumar Panda | University of Reading | Reducing funding for Basic Sciences and Fundamental research in fields like Physics and Astronomy would be disastrous for the humanity and society in general! |
| Dr Fidel Alfaro Almagro | University of Oxford | This is completely unacceptable! |
| Ernesto Oliva | INAF Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory | |
| Prof Chris Done | Durham University | |
| Prof Colin Snodgrass | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Ellen Leitinger | University of Bologna | |
| Prof. Richard Massey | Durham University | |
| Dr Daria Zakharova | INAF Trieste | |
| Yuanyuan Zhang | NSF NOIRLab | Best wishes to Nottingham Physics and Astronomy. |
| Dr. Angela Bragaglia | INAF-OAS Bologna, Italy | |
| Prof. Robert E. Smith | University of Sussex | |
| Dr. Lorenzo Ducci | University of Tuebingen | |
| Dr. Francesco Carotenuto | INAF - Observatory of Rome | |
| Dr Nicolás Cardiel | Universidad Complutense de Madrid | Science is the ONLY future |
| Prof. Enzo Branchini | University of Genoa | |
| Prof. Sownak Bose | Durham University | |
| Prof. Salvatore Esposito | Federico II University of Naples | |
| Prof Ian Bonnell | University of St Andrews | |
| Dr. Gregory Rudnick | University of Kansas | The Physics & Astronomy faculty at Nottingham do amazing research and their department is internationally recognized. Shortsighted cuts of the kind described here will decimate a world leader in Physics & Astronomy. |
| Dr Dylan Rankin | University of Pennsylvania | |
| Assoc. Prof. F. Oikonomou | Norwegian University of Science and Technology | |
| Dr. Mauro Orlandini | INAF/OAS Bologna | |
| Dr Marina Orio | Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, and INAF-Padova, Italy | |
| Dr. Allison Kirkpatrick | University of Kansas | |
| Dr Marco Crisostomi | U. Pisa | |
| Prof Alexey A. Petrov | University of South Carolina | |
| Dr. Dimitri Gadotti | Durham University | |
| Dr Valentina D’Odorico | INAF - Astronomical Observatory of Trieste | |
| Dr Eric Giunchi | University of Bologna | |
| Dr. Mario Radovich | INAF | |
| Dr Abigail Roberts | University of Sheffield | |
| Dr Andrea Travascio | INAF | |
| Prof. Mark Swinbank | Durham University | |
| Dr Roberto Orosei | Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) | |
| Dr Tracy Webb | McGill University | |
| Dr. Logan Jones | Space Telescope Science Institute | |
| Professor Matthew Wing | University College London | |
| Prof. Richard Myers | University of Durham | |
| Dr. Andrea Reguitti | INAF-OAPd | |
| Prof Nicola Bartolo | University of Padova | |
| Levi Schult | Vanderbilt University | |
| Dr. Roan Haggar | University of Waterloo | |
| Dr Cristina Furlanetto | Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil | |
| Dr Evangelos Paspaliaris | INAF | |
| Professor Nikos Konstantinidis | University College London | |
| Knut Olsen | NOIRLab | There must be another solution to the financial situation that avoids destroying a deeply respected department. |
| Prof. Ghazal Geshnizjani | Perimeter Institute and University of Waterloo | |
| Dr Evelyn Johnston | Universidad Diego Portales (UDP) | |
| Dr Giuseppe D'Ago | Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge | |
| Dr. Minas Karamanis | University of California, Berkeley | These proposed cuts are the predictable consequence of reckless spending on vanity capital projects, yet it is the academic and technical staff who are being made to pay the price. A university's purpose is its people — the researchers and teachers who built Nottingham's world-class reputation in physics and astronomy. The leadership should be held accountable for the decisions that created this crisis, not rewarded with the power to dismantle what others spent decades building. |
| Dr Amy Howard | Imperial College London | |
| Prof. Jon Willis | University of Victoria | |
| Prof. Raphael Hirschi | Keele University | |
| Dr Ryan MacDonald | University of St Andrews | As someone who grew up near Nottingham, I can say that Nottingham has an outstanding reputation for excellence in physics and astronomy. The short-sighted decision to impose compulsory redundancies on physics and astronomy staff will do irrevocable damage to Nottingham's ability to attract physics students. This decision should be immediately reversed. |
| Prof. Aaron Romanowsky | San Jose State University, University of California Santa Cruz | |
| Dr Edd Edmondson | UCL | |
| Dr Susha Parameswaran | University of Liverpool | |
| Natasha Jeffrey | Northumbria University | |
| Prof. Stephen R. Taylor | Vanderbilt University | |
| Prof. Jerome Quintin | Ecole de Technologie Superieure | |
| Prof. Keith Hamilton | UCL | |
| Dr Stephanie Yardley | Northumbria University | |
| Winky Lee | The University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Chris Simpson | Gemini Observatory, NSF's NOIRLab | |
| Dr Danny van Dyk | Durham University | |
| Lucio Chiappetti | IASF Milano INAF Italy (retired) | I am astonished to see an European research institution to apply arbitrary staff cuts like these. |
| Prof Leigh Fletcher | University of Leicester | |
| Dr Baptiste Fabre | University of Bordeaux | |
| Juliet Semple | University of Oxford | As an MRI Research Radiographer at the University of Oxford, I work closely with physicists and see first-hand how fundamental physics research underpins major advances across healthcare, technology, engineering and data science. The University of Nottingham holds a particularly important place in this history through the pioneering work of Sir Peter Mansfield and the internationally recognised scientific culture that helped drive advances in MRI and imaging science. That legacy exists because universities invested in fundamental physics research and in the people capable of asking difficult, curiosity-driven questions about the world and the universe around us. It is therefore deeply concerning to see proposals for compulsory redundancies on this scale within a globally respected School of Physics and Astronomy. Departments such as Nottingham’s do far more than produce academic publications. They train highly skilled graduates who go on to contribute across medicine, AI, computing, engineering, education and industry, while also inspiring future generations into STEM careers. The international response to these proposals alone demonstrates the reputation and value of the department. Reputations of this calibre take decades to build but can be damaged remarkably quickly. Once expertise, research culture and talented staff are lost, they are extraordinarily difficult to replace. I strongly urge the University of Nottingham to reconsider these proposals and to work with staff and unions to identify alternative solutions that protect both the institution’s financial future and its internationally recognised excellence in Physics and Astronomy. |
| Dr. Richard Feder | UC Berkeley | |
| Leonardo A. Lessa | University of Waterloo and Perimeter Institute | |
| Juan Pablo Caso | Universidad Nacional de La Plata | |
| Martin White | University of California, Berkeley | The Nottingham Physics department is world renowned. This decision is truly shocking and will cause irreversible damage to Nottinghams reputation. |
| Dr. Joanne Cohn | UC Berkeley | |
| Dr Anne-Marie Weijmans | University of St Andrews | |
| Prof. Marco De Petris | Sapienza University of Rome | I fully support the petition, hoping it may help lead to a reconsideration of this decision. |
| Prof. África Castillo-Morales | Universidad Complutense de Madrid | |
| Lauro Moscardini | Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna | |
| Massimo Marengo | Florida State University | From engineering to AI, physics provides the knowledge backbone for the modern world (an example: a recent Nobel prize in physics was awarded to scientists that developed the crucial physics-inspired method that led to the development of modern large language models AI). Without a strong physics and astronomy program society suffers: students will not be able to effectively enter the modern workforce, and research providing the future breakthrough in technology and health will dither and die. Smothering physics and astronomy programs is shortsighted, and in the long term will lose more money than it seems to save in the moment. |
| Dr. Tomáš Šoltinský | INAF | The PhD programme at the School of Physics and Astronomy is exceptional because of the dedication, expertise, guidance, and support provided by its academic staff — both through their individual contributions and their collective effort in creating a thriving research environment. Proceeding with cuts of this scale would severely impoverish not only the University of Nottingham, but also the wider UK scientific and educational landscape. |
| Dr David Mulryne | QMUL | |
| Abbie Donaldson | University of Edinburgh | Nottinghams physics degree is highly regarded, it would suffer enormously if these redundancies were enforced. |
| Christopher Clark | Space Telescope Science Institute / ESA | Reminiscent of the story about the sprinter who cut off one of his legs in order to shed weight and run faster. A shocking suggestion for a successful & globally respected department. |
| Martin Savage | University of Washington | |
| Benjamin Eller | University of Maryland, College Park | |
| Paul Hirst | International Gemini Observatory / US National Optical and Infrared Research Laboratory | The research and teaching output of the Physics and Astronomy Department at Nottingham are highly respected world wide, and for good reason. Redundancies such as these would irreversibly harm the reputation and standing of the university for decades to come. |
| James Sharp | Ossila Ltd | |
| Brenda D. Gómez-Cortes | University of Pittsburgh, PITTPACC | Standing with Nottingham physicist and astronomers! |
| Dr. Conor Fitzpatrick | University of Manchester | |
| Rob Beswick | Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, The University of Manchester | |
| Chamkaur Ghag | UCL | |
| Dr. Mats van Es | University of Oxford | |
| Prof. Matt Jarvis | University of Oxford | To say cutting jobs within physics and astronomy is shortsighted is a severe understatement. These subjects underpin student recruitment in STEM subjects which are a national priority. Furthermore, astrophysics research provides key in depth training in data science with astrophysics researchers being earlier adopters of machine learning and AI for scientific discovery. Nottingham is only a top university due to these same academics who are now under threat! |
| Prof Andy Taylor | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Amelia Fraser-McKelvie | European Southern Observatory | |
| Mohamed Sabba | University of Southampton | Nottingham's famous physics department housed giants in the field, such as the likes of Sir Peter Mansfield (Nobel Prize in Medicine 2003) otherwise known as the father of MRI. It is an utter disgrace that such a world-class department that other countries view with envy and admiration should be placed at risk of closure; a situation that raises serious questions about the sanity (or lack thereof) of the decision-makers. |
| Emilio Molinari | INAF Milano | stop cutting roots of progress |
| Xin Wang | University of Padua | |
| Dr. Robert Harris | Durham University | |
| Stephen A. Boyd, PhD | California Thermodynamics | You would be losing one of the premier physics research institutions in the entire of the UK. Please reconsider!! Nottingham has produced Nobel laureates! |
| Pratik Chattopadhyay | University of Electronic Science and Technology of China | |
| Prof. Sera Markoff | University of Cambridge | |
| Prof Chris Clarkson | Queen Mary University of London | |
| Dr Pruthvi Mehta | Imperial College London NHS Trust | |
| Elisabetta Reggiani | INAF - OAA, University of Florence | |
| Prof Annette Ferguson | University of Edinburgh | |
| Prof. Dennis Zaritsky | University of Arizona | |
| Prof. Steven Finkelstein | UT Austin | |
| Shaun Cole | Durham University | |
| Hasti Khoraminezhad | Missouri University of Science and Technology | |
| Dr Phil Bull | University of Manchester | |
| Francisco Gil Pedro | Universita' di Bologna | |
| Prof. Pascale Jablonka | EPFL | At a time of a series of Nobel prizes in Astronomy and increased needs for scientific understanding of the world, how can Notthingham University misunderstand its interest? |
| Kushal Pithia | Aston University | It’s heartbreaking to see an institution that felt like home feel like it’s being gutted from the inside. The Physics department was only ever as strong as it was because of the amazing staff that kept it running by doing world class research, supporting students and keeping the day to day running. I can only imagine how hard it is for the members of staff who have gotten notice that they are at risk of redundancy and for the staff who have been told that a third of their colleagues and friends will be getting fired. |
| Prof Graham Shore | Swansea University | |
| Kevin Weatherill | Durham University | |
| Prof Thomas R. Greve | Cosmic Dawn Center, Technical University of Denmark | |
| Professor Richard McMahon | University of Cambridge | Physics underpins science; engineering and technological research and development that benefits society in the 21st century and beyond. We need more education and research in Physics and University of Nottingham will do irreversible damage to its national and international reputation but this short sighted decision. |
| Professor Shardha Jogee | University of Texas at Austin | |
| Prof Sergey Koposov | University of Edinburgh | This is another example of a clear failure by university administrations across the UK. The administrations make reckless investments, then move on to other jobs with no accountability. Consequently, the academics and students are left to suffer the consequences. In this case, a strong physics and astronomy department is being targeted with potentially devastating results. |
| Dr Marie Martig | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Prof. Marco Baldi | Bologna University | |
| Dr Enrique Paillas | Universidad Diego Portales (UDP) | |
| Dr. Weiguang Cui | Universidad Autonoma de madrid | |
| Miriam Al-Hadithi | University of Cambridge | |
| Thomas O’Sullivan | Freie Universität Berlin | |
| Dr Beatriz Mingo | University of Hertfordshire | |
| Prof. Henning Flaecher | University of Bristol | Vandalism that will lead to further difficulties |
| Claire Rigouzzo | King’s College London | |
| Andrew Blain | University of Leicester | Quite astonishing. I suspect that there are at least twenty much-more-highly-paid candidates for dismissal lurking idly and redundantly in a plush office suite where they hatched the plans that got their university into whatever financial mess it’s in, likely involving foolish agreements with feudal dictatorships. Characters whose only lifes work has been to turn food into shit. Vandalism and idiocy. |
| Prof. Sabino Matarrese | University of Padova - Italy | |
| K.E. Saavik Ford | City University of New York | Shocking dismantling of a valued department! |
| Prof. Eric Linder | University of California Berkeley | Nottingham Physics and Astronomy has contributed to some of the most data rich surveys of the universe, and is home to scientists with some of the most incisive ideas into the nature of gravity and the foundations of physics. They should be lauded and expanded not weighed upon and cut. |
| Prof. Gary Fuller | The University of Manchester | |
| Anik Halder | University of Cambridge | |
| Prof Michael Brown | University of Manchester | |
| Dr Gaurav Ray | Swansea University | |
| Joseph Eatson | University of Arizona formerly University of Sheffield | |
| Andrea Caputo | Sapienza University of Rome | |
| Dr. Ayngaran Thavanesan | EPFL | This is just an example of what not to do. |
| Prof. Alicia Aarnio | University of North Carolina Greensboro | Academic programs and personnel should be the absolute last to go when and if budgetary problems arise. Our program was eliminated after mismanagement of funds and it has permanently damaged the reputation of the institution and our ability to serve our students. If an institution of higher learning is so readily willing to sacrifice academics, what does it actually stand for in the first place? |
| Dr. Felipe Menanteau | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | Physics and astronomy programs produce graduates with highly transferable quantitative, computational and AI-related skills that contribute well beyond academia. Weakening a major physics department risks undermining regional scientific capacity, innovation and workforce development at precisely the time these areas are becoming strategically important. |
| Elizaveta Sazonova | University of Waterloo | |
| Alexander Rauscher | University of British Columbia | Speaking for my field of research, which is magnetic resonance imaging: Faculty at Nottingham's Department of Physics & Astronomy are world leading in this field and continue the outstanding pioneering work by the department's late Nobel laureate Sir Peter Mansfield. To benefit from synergies, the department should be strengthened, not weakened. |
| Radha Boya | University of Manchester | |
| Vincent Eke | Durham University | |
| Prof Rikard Enberg | Uppsala University | |
| Dr. Syeda Lammim Ahad | Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics | |
| Dr. Frederick Davies | Max Planck Institute for Astronomy | |
| Benne Holwerda | University of Louisville | |
| Prof. Justin I. Read | University of Surrey | |
| Dr Sonali Shukla | University of Cambridge | It is sad to see the shortsightedness of the national level funding agencies, but even sadder to see a major research university join in rather than push back against the shortsightedness. I would urge the senior administration to reconsider. |
| Dr Denis Erkal | Head of Astrophysics Research Group, University of Surrey | |
| Prof. Kevin Pimbblet | University of Hull | |
| Jeremy Sakstein | University of Hawai'i at Manoa | Nottingham Physics & Astronomy is an internationally respected center of research and teaching excellence, with a long record of important contributions across fundamental and applied physics. Reducing the School on this scale would cause lasting damage not only to Nottingham, but to the wider UK and international physics community. I strongly urge the University to protect this department and the people who make its work possible. |
| Lucy Ivey | University of Cambridge | |
| Dr Alex Hall | University of Edinburgh | The School of Physics & Astronomy at Nottingham is one of the world's foremost centres of physics teaching, research, and innovation. For it to pay the price of what appears to be catastrophic mismanagement by the University's senior leadership is disgraceful. |
| Matteo Viel | SISSA | |
| Vittoria Vecchiotti | INAF-OAA | |
| Robert Myers | Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics | |
| Michele Bellazzini | INAF - OAS Bologna | |
| Carmelita Carbone | INAF - Institute of Space Astrophysics and Cosmic Physics (IASF Milano) | |
| Dr Salvatore Mancani | University of Padua | |
| Prof. Nabil Iqbal | Durham University | |
| Shabbir Shaikh | Arizona State University | |
| Soheb Mandhai | The University of Manchester | |
| Darren Croton | Swinburne University of Technology | Nottingham is a global leader in both theoretical and observational astrophysics. I’m horrified that the university there is willing to lose this, along with public trust and institutional reputation. |
| Cicero Lu | NOIRLab/Gemini Observatory | |
| Carlotta Gruppioni | INAF | |
| Dr. Charlotte Götz | Northumbria University | |
| Prof. Paul van der Werf | Leiden University | |
| Dr. Sebastián Marino | University of Exeter | |
| Dr Rebecca Davies | Swinburne University of Technology | |
| Prof. Steven Schofield | University College London | |
| Choppin Haudry de Janvry | CEA Paris Saclay | Please save Nottingham Physics ! All the best from France. |
| Thuy Chick | University of Bedfordshire | |
| Prof. George Becker | University of California Riverside | The School of Physics and Astronomy at Nottingham boasts one of the top programs in the UK and is held in high esteem internationally thanks to its outstanding staff. Universities worldwide are facing difficult financial circumstances, but the proposed cuts here are unfathomably short-sighted given the obvious importance of research and teaching in these fields. |
| Prof. Arif Babul | University of Victoria | Last year, I had the privilege of visiting the University of Nottingham and giving a seminar to the Astronomy and Astrophysics group. I came away impressed by the group’s energy, creativity, and momentum, and by the vibrant and collaborative environment where talented students and researchers actively engaged with major scientific questions. In Astronomy, Nottingham is recognized internationally as a powerhouse whose influence and research profile far exceed what many would expect from a university of its scale and standing. Moreover, the University’s Physics and Astronomy students have a reputation for being technically strong, creative, and intellectually independent - something that is itself the product of years of sustained investment and academic vision. I find it difficult to understand what could compel Nottingham to contemplate dismantling one of its genuine academic strengths. This is especially short-sighted because fields such as Astronomy and Physics also serve a broader purpose: they attract exceptionally capable and innovative young people and train them in precisely the kinds of skills that are now in growing demand across many sectors - data science, advanced computing, AI, quantitative modelling, and the management of complex problems and large datasets. These disciplines do far more than prepare students for employment; they cultivate a rigorous and highly adaptable way of thinking that modern Britain increasingly needs. I strongly urge the University leadership not to proceed with what is sure to be a deeply damaging mistake. |
| Chris Power | The University of Western Australia | This is genuinely shocking and short-sighted. Physics and Astronomy at Nottingham is a genuine concentration of expertise and excellence, built up over decades. What is proposed is foolish self-harm on the part of the university and must not go ahead. |
| Daniela Carollo | INAF- Astronomical Observatory of Trieste | |
| Emma Ryan-Weber | Swinburne University of Technology | |
| Simon Driver | University or Western Australia | Nottingham has a strong international track record in Physics and Astrophysics. Fundamental sciences such as these are critical, and should not suffer for short term gains. |
| Taleana Huff | Queen's University | Nottingham Physics has been a staple institution I’ve looked toward for cutting-edge research long before becoming a professor myself. Seeing a short-sighted decision that risks hamstringing the department’s ability to maintain that reputation on the world stage is devastating. The institution needs to strongly reconsider this direction. Cutting the very people who educate students, attract talent, secure research recognition, and elevate the university internationally is not the answer. |
| Damiano Capocci | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr. Barbara Mazzilli Ciraulo | International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research | |
| Dr. Aaron Ludlow | University of Western Australia | |
| Stefano Borgani | University of Trieste | |
| Claudia Lagos | University of Western Australia | Nottingham has a proud tradition in physics and astronomy. I personally have collaborated with many staff there, all of fantastic quality. They are not only great assets to the university, but also to the astronomy community as a whole. |
| Prof Mark Mezei | University of Oxford | |
| Dr. Lawrence E. Bilton | University of Hull | |
| Dr Aidin Masouminia | IPPP, Durham University | |
| Sai Swagat Mishra | BITS PILANI HYDERABAD CAMPUS | |
| Aditya Narendra | Jagiellonian University | Please dont do this |
| Bo-Xuan Ge | Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (HIAS, UCAS) | The University of Nottingham has long enjoyed a widespread reputation in the field of physics, particularly in fundamental physics. I sincerely hope that the University can preserve more positions in this area, as fundamental physics is exceedingly difficult to reconstruct once lost. |
| Professor Alice Shapley | University of California, Los Angeles | |
| Dr Pete Lally | Imperial College London | |
| Prof. Andrew Cooper | National Tsing Hua University | |
| Prof. Peter H. Johansson | University of Helsinki | |
| Prof Amelie Saintonge | University College London and Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy | |
| Benedetta Ciardi | Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Garching, Germany | |
| Dr. Kelley M Hess | Chalmers University | |
| Suratna Das | Ashoka University, India | |
| Tony Cafolla | Dublin City University | |
| Dr Kristina Rusimova | University of Bath | |
| Steven Rieder | University of Amsterdam | |
| Michele Liguori | University of Padova | |
| Arpita Misra | Jagiellonian University | |
| Cesare Barbieri | Professor Emeritus of Astronomy, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Padova, Italy | |
| Pier Stefano Corasaniti | Observatoire de Paris | |
| Prof Jayne Birkby | University of Oxford | |
| Margherita Molaro | Imperial College London | |
| Dr Johanna Hartke | Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO | |
| Dr Adam Sweetman URF | University of Leeds | |
| Professor Simon Jeffery | Armagh Observatory and Planetarium | |
| Dr Thomas Mohaupt | University of Liverpool | |
| Dr Susan Pyne | UCL | |
| Lucio Buson | National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) - Italy | Personally I do think that this short-sighted policy aiming at starving the academic research looks like a kind of self-harming choice for United Kingdom (and not only). |
| Dr. Felice Cusano | INAF-OAS Bologna, Italy | |
| Fabian Natterer | University of Zurich | I support this letter and urge the decision makers to rethink their austerity measures. Investing in research and education in fundamental sciences are critical to maintaining and boosting UKs technological edge and reputation. |
| Taylor Pomfret | Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics | |
| Iason Saganas | Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics | |
| Adam Foster | Aalto University | |
| Angelo Ricciardone | University of Pisa | |
| Bikram Pradhan | Iucaa | |
| Benedetta Casavecchia | Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics | |
| Luigi Guzzo | Universita` di Milano | It is a plain fact that physicists (whatever their sub-field) are very successful in jobs across very diverse areas, from finance to data science, from engineering to, obviously, the academy. The broad toolbox of a physicist is what allows such a flexibility. Cutting down this to favour more directly applied disciplines is a poor, short-sighted decision. Does one require a higher proof of this foundational importance, than the Nobel Prize in Physics 2024? |
| Adrian Bevan | Queen Mary University of London | The easy solution is to cut like this, and it looks like an act of desparation. It highlights both governance issues and short sighted decision making. Those staff with the strongest profiles will be seen as a great hiring opportunity by competitor institutes and weaken Nottingham in the long run. Physics underpins our understanding of how thibgs work and Astronomy inspires people to engage with STEM. Both are key drivers to the economy and aligned with the needs of Government and the IS8. |
| Robert Temperton | MAX IV Laboratory, Lund University | A very sad day for UoN. It should be obviously that dramatically cutting teaching staff in a successful department is a not the smartest way to cut costs... |
| Dr. Frank Hellmann | Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research | |
| Dr Pablo Fosalba | Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC, IEEC) | |
| Dr Ankit Khunt | Sardar Patel University | |
| Prof Andy Lawrence | University of Edinburgh | How extremely short sighted as well as cruel. Physics and Astronomy in Nottingham is world leading, but after this it would be much less so. Future REF, grant, and student income would reduce. Sudden drastic cuts just aren't the way to balance the books. |
| Dr Matthew Blunt | University College London | |
| Andrea Grazian | INAF | |
| Pietro Cassaro | Istituto di Radioastronomia INAF | |
| Andrea Biviano | INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste | I consider the restructuring plan as it is now, simply an insult to the worldwide recognized very high quality of research in astrophysics at the Nottingham University. |
| Prof Mark Sullivan | University of Southampton | |
| Dr Sarah Bosman | University of Heidelberg | Please reconsider this absurd decision. |
| Prof. Martin R. S. McCoustra | Heriot-Watt University | As a former member of staff of the School of Chemistry of the University of Nottingham, whose promotion to Professor came through that University, I am sad to learn of the proposal action by the University to reduce staff numbers in Chemistry and Physics. These are the core disciplines that underpin and foster the pipeline of technological innovation. Such short term action as proposed by the University of Nottingham will undoubtedly impact on the international profile of the University and on recruitment at all levels from undergraduate through postgraduate and beyond in the longer term. It will likely cause irreversible harm to an outstanding reputation garnered over many years. The proposed action must be reviewed and constructive dialogue undertaken to avoid these outcomes. |
| Prof Michelle Collins | University of Surrey | |
| Shaghaiegh Azyzy | Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics | |
| Simona Righini | INAF | Short-sighted decisions like this are horrible mistakes, causing a landslide of damage. It seems that we, in western countries, are losing the capability to make solid investments and plans towards long-term progress. |
| Prof. Natalio Krasnogor | Newcastle University | Yet another example of short-sightedness, lazy, thinking and lack of imagination. It should be clear by now to senior leadership that, as commonly attributed to A. Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”. Current "cut&burn" thinking framework should be broken, rendered null and void once and for all. |
| Prof David Alexander | Durham University | The proposed cuts to this excellent Physics and Astronomy group will have severe repercussions not only for Physics and STEM but for the standing (and longevity) of the University of Nottingham. Engage with the academic staff and look for less drastic solutions. |
| Prof. Frédéric Mayet | Université Grenoble Alpes | |
| Professor Stuart Clare | University of Oxford | |
| Prof Adrian Jenkins | Durham University | |
| Christian Aoufia | IFT UAM/CSIC | |
| Jason Hunt | University of Surrey | |
| Daniela Bettoni | INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova | |
| Francisco Miguel Montenegro Montes | Universidad Complutense de Madrid | Allocating public money into research excellence is one of the best investments a society can make. Highly qualified lecturers, scientists and engineers should not pay the price of wrong financial decisions made elsewhere in the past. |
| Lorenzo Napolitano | INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma | As a postdoc working outside the UK, I want to express my full support for the School of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Nottingham. From the earliest stages of my career to today, I have been deeply impressed by the quality and impact of Nottingham’s research. My own understanding of astronomy has been shaped by the outstanding work and lectures of colleagues from this community. There is no such thing as “redundancy” when it comes to excellent research, teaching, and scientific leadership. My support goes to all the professors, researchers, and postdocs whose achievements and dedication to the field I deeply respect. |
| Ummi Abbas | INAF - Turin Astrophysical Observatory | |
| Klaas Wiersema | University of Hertfordshire | Senseless destruction. |
| Umberto Maio | Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) | |
| Dr Katarina Kraljic | Strasbourg Observatory | |
| Chiara Coviello | King’s College London | |
| Prof. Paula Chadwick | Durham University | |
| Dr. Emanuele De Rubeis | Hamburg Universität | |
| Claudia Maria Raiteri | INAF - Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino | |
| Francesco Biagiotti | INAF-IAPS | |
| Dr. James Turner | INAF Astronomical Observatory of Rome | I gladly offer my support and solidarity to all Nottingham University staff. |
| Prof Mark Thompson | University of Leeds | |
| Dr Jorge Ferreras Fuertes | European Space Agency | |
| Elisa Gouvea Mauricio Ferreira | University of Tokyo, Kavli IPMU | |
| Veronica Biffi | INAF | |
| Prof. Jonathan Pritchard | University of Strathclyde | As a former alumnus it is incredibly troubling to see a vibrant department offering outstanding research and teaching being decimated this way, which will impact not only the University but also the UK's international reputation for being a place that values high quality research and researchers. |
| Harry George Chittenden | Swinburne University of Technology | |
| Michael Bradley | Swinburne university of technology | Save Nottingham |
| Dr Alessio Spurio Mancini | Royal Holloway, University of London | |
| Claudia de Rham | Imperial College London | Nottingham physics and astronomy is world leading in research, in education and in engagement. |
| Dr Yuchen Ding | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Iacopo Bartalucci | Univesity of Rome Tor Vergata | |
| Jarle Brinchmann | European Southern Observatory | Nottingham's astronomy department is an excellent institution but by no means too large, and cutting it by this factor would be very damaging not just to astronomy at Nottingham and in the UK, but also for all the excellent undergraduates and graduates coming through Nottingham University. |
| Dr Antonio Portas | Northumbria University | The staff at the School of Physics and astronomy at Nottingham University, not only have a well known worldwide research reputation but also have well established outreach and public engagement programmes which are vital to engage with the next generation of young people keen to deep their studies in such fundamental areas. |
| Andrew Fisher | UCL (University College London) | There are a lot of comments on this thread about the excellence of astronomy and gravitational physics at Nottingham but the condensed matter, nanoscience and quantum information activities there are also absolutely first-rate. This step will be terribly damaging both to the university and to the wider landsapce of scientific research and education in the UK - please don't do this! |
| Prof. Isobel Hook | Lancaster University | While I understand that many UK universities are having to make difficult decisions in the current climate, making drastic cuts to Nottingham's School of Physics and Astronomy seems completely counter productive. The School provides excellent teaching and training for the next generation of scientists, and carries out word-class research that strengthens the UK's international reputation. I hope that a different solution can be found. |
| Anders Tranberg | University of Stavanger | |
| Prof. Richard Alexander | University of Leicester | |
| Dr Noelia E. D. Noël | University of Surrey | As an astrophysicist, I am deeply concerned by these proposals. Nottingham's School of Physics and Astronomy is a department of international standing, and the loss of twenty staff would be felt across the UK research community for years to come. Please reconsider, and engage seriously with the alternatives proposed by UCU. |
| Prof Stuart Cavill | University of York | As a former student of Nottingham Physics, I am utterly shocked and horrified to hear of the intentional vandalism being proposed to this Nobel-prize-winning department by the very people there to support them. Why is it that very highly remunerated central management think it acceptable that others should pay the price for their failings? Clearly, given the scale of redundancies proposed across the whole of Nottingham University, this is a University management issue, not helped by UUK’s failure to effectively lobby various governments for a sustainable funding system. However, given the disastrous investment in the Castle Meadow campus, the current crisis is of the University management’s own making. This decision will permanently damage the reputation of this world-leading Physics department, and diminish the wider UK Physics community. |
| Elisa Bortolas | INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova | |
| Prof. Jesús Falcón-Barroso | Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias | Lost for words. As a graduate of the first generation of PhD students at the Astronomy department, I strongly oppose to this decision. |
| Dr Stephen Thorp | University of Cambridge | |
| Andrzej Wereszczynski | Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland | Physics and Astronomy in Nottingham is of the world leading class. They make the Nottingham University famous all over the world. |
| Dr. Roberta Giusteri | INAF - Astronomical Observatory of Trieste, Italy | |
| Tiziana Di Salvo | University of Palermo | |
| Dr. Benedetta Vulcani | INAF - OaPD | |
| Lucy Clews | The Open University | |
| Dr Steven Cunnington | University of Portsmouth | |
| Dr Matthew Smith | Cardiff University | |
| Ian Harrison | Cardiff University | Growing up in Derby, the existence and quality of the Nottingham Physics department caused me to explore my interest in physics and astronomy in more detail. Without it I may not have started on the path to a STEM career. |
| Dr Samantha Oates | Lancaster University | |
| Dr Thomas G. Williams | University of Manchester | My undergraduate time at Nottingham was fantastic, in no small part due to the excellent staff in the department. Decimating the department like this is unconscionable, and would be a huge blow not just to Nottingham but to UK science as a whole |
| prof. Barbara Lanzoni | Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Bologna, Italy | |
| Dr. Emmet Golden-Marx | INAF-OAPd | I have had the opportunity to visit the University of Nottingham Physics & Astronomy department on multiple occasions and each time I am reminded what a vibrant and intellectually stimulating department it is. I have had many amazing scientific discussions with people at Nottingham and find that the work the department is doing is vital for my own astronomy work. I think downsizing the department in any manner would cause extreme harm not only to the university, but to the larger astronomy community as well. |
| Dr Samuel Jarvis | Lancaster University | |
| William Roper | University of Sussex | |
| Dr. Lola Balaguer-Núñez | Universitat de Barcelona | Unjustifiable |
| Francesca Zanetti | University of Bologna and INAF-IRA | |
| Dr Matthew Temple | Durham University | |
| Dr Claire Sweetenham | Imperial College London | |
| Josefa Masegosa Gallego | IAA-CSIC,Spain | |
| Pablo G. Pérez-González | Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), CSIC-INTA | |
| Davide | Sciotti | |
| Jaime Perea | Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC) Spain | |
| Benedict Bahr-Kalus | INAF | |
| Till Sawala | University of Helsinki | UK astronomy and astrophysics has been world-class for centuries, advancing many fields of science and technology. Rather than standing on the shoulders of giants and carrying the torch forward, these proposed cuts threaten to betray and destroy this unique legacy. We cannot let this happen. |
| Arman Shafieloo | Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute | |
| Ian Smail | Durham | I support this petition. |
| Juan Antonio Fernández Ontiveros | Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón | |
| Karina Thånell | MAX IV Laboratory, Lund University | Cutting a department down with 30% of its workforce is absurd and obviously counter productive in the long term - both for research and education. If it is moreover grounded in mistakes made at other levels, it is unacceptable and shameful. |
| David Jones | Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias | |
| Dr. Carlos López San Juan | Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón | |
| Quanmin Guo | University of Birmingham | I challenge the senior management team to come out with a more intelligent solution to resolve the crisis. Cutting down staff force to save money is not a solution，but an easy escape route for the senior Management. |
| Alexander Farren | University of Cambridge | |
| Sandra Raimundo | University of Southampton | |
| Emeritus Professor Ronan McGrath | University of Liverpool | Nottingham physics has world-leaders in many areas, including surfaces and nanoscale physics. This action would be a disaster for the University, sending out a message worldwide of an institution in severe decline. |
| Jorge Peñarrubia | University of Edinburgh | It takes decades -if not centuries- to build the reputation of an institution. It is sad to see how easily it can be destroyed by an incompetent administration. |
| Dr Rebecca Chislett | UCL | |
| Kazuya Koyama | University of Portsmouth | |
| Annelies Mortier | University of Birmingham | |
| Laura Bisigello | INAF-OAPD | |
| Prof Scott Kay | University of Manchester | |
| Tom Siday | University of Birmingham | Nottingham physics (through sixty symbols) was a huge factor in me pursuing physics. Cuts like this are short-sighted, do long-lasting damage and are only motivated by greed and mis-management from the top. We cannot keep putting the axe to those who are foundational to the success of universities, while protecting incompetent management who do nothing but work against the core values of university research and education. |
| Thomas Gasparetto | INAF (Italy) | |
| Maria Tantalo | INAF - Astronomical Observatory of Rome | |
| Prof. Mariangela Bernardi | University of Pennsylvania | |
| Dr Samantha Penny | University of Portsmouth | Former PhD student at the University of Nottingham |
| Prof. Ignacio Trujillo | Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias | |
| Prof Johan Knapen | Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Spain | |
| Thomas Rintoul | Cardiff University | |
| Neal Salan | Swinburne University of Technology | Physics and astronomy are vital sciences. This seems like disinformation running the University, decisions driven by scaremongering, rather than the search for truth. |
| Stijn Wuyts | University of Bath | |
| Antonino Marasco | INAF | |
| Jon Campbell | University of Oxford | |
| Dr Nicholas Boardman | University of St Andrews | Absolutely appalling decision by the University's leadership. As a former undergraduate in this excellent department, I very much hope this is reversed. |
| Ricardo T. Génova-Santos | Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias | |
| Jacopo ghiglieri | Subatech, CNRS, Nantes, France | |
| Anna Gallazzi | INAF-Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory | |
| Dr. Monica Relano | University of Granada | |
| Prof. Or Graur | University of Portsmouth | |
| Rubén García-Benito | Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía | |
| Prof. Luis M. Sarro | UNED, Spain | Redundancies are the clear sign of a failure in the management. |
| Dr. Jeremy Sanders | Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics | |
| Marcelino Agúndez | Instituto de Física Fundamental, CSIC | My full support to our colleagues in Nottingham |
| Ryan Begley | Armagh Observatory and Planetarium | |
| Prof. Ofer Lahav | University College London | University of Nottingham’s School of Physics and Astronomy is among the leading centres in the UK by virtually all measures of academic excellence. Beyond their major contributions to curiosity-driven research, they have also contributed significantly to economic growth through the training of students in AI and other advanced fields. The imposed budget cuts are short-sighted and send the wrong message to the public about the importance of science and technology. |
| Sahyadri Krishna | University of St Andrews | |
| Becky Canning | University of Portsmouth | |
| Dr. Matthieu Schaller | Leiden University | |
| Abigail Seddon | ICN2 | End proposed redundancy, save the staff, save physics |
| Dr Vicky Scowcroft | University of Bath | |
| Elisabeth Sola | Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge | |
| Stefano Sanvito | Trinity College Dublin | |
| Dr. Anastasiya Yilmaz | INAF-IAPS | |
| Dr. Dominique SLuse | University of Liège (Uliège) | There is no such thing as redundancy in science. What drives scientific progress is the creativity of each researcher, approaching problems in their own way. If a colleague working in the same field is just next door, they can challenge you more effectively and ultimately strengthen your work. Cutting research groups in the name of redundancy assumes that scientists are deterministic machines "producing knowledge”. I wish this were not the case. |
| Prof Thomas Reiprich | Argelander Institute for Astronomy, University of Bonn | |
| Jesus Gallego | Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) | |
| Dr Patricia Cambalova | University of Oxford | |
| Prof. Miguel-Ángel Aloy | University of Valencia | |
| Dr Peter Sloan | University of Bath | |
| Jorge Casares | Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias | |
| Carlo Nipoti | University of Bologna | |
| Paige Taylor | Swinburne University of Technology | |
| Matus Rybak | Leiden University | |
| Robert Morris | Nottingham Trent University | |
| Yejin An | UST/KASI | |
| Jarah Evslin | Institute of Modern Physics, CAS | |
| Gabriella De Lucia | INAF - Astronomical Observatory of Trieste | |
| Dr. Paramita Barai | INAF - Astronomical Observatory of Trieste (Italy) | |
| Stefano Covino | INAF / Brera Astronomical Observatory | |
| Stefania Pezzuto | INAF - IAPS | |
| Dr. Chiara Moretti | INAF Trieste | |
| Prof. Marc Ribó | Universitat de Barcelona | |
| Ilaria Musella | INAF-Capodimonte Astronomical Observatory (Naples) | |
| Purba Mukherjee | Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute | |
| Abigail Hutchby | Kings College London, East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust | This department allowed me to excel in my physics degree and open many doors for me within medical physics. It would be an absolute shame and have a big impact on the future of physics and innovation if this department was to be cut by this extent. |
| Prof. Martin M. Roth | Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP) | Shocking. Please stop this. |
| Alex Vano-Vinuales | IAC3, University of the Balearic Islands | |
| Dr. Belen Alcalde Pampliega | SKA Observatory, UK | |
| Carlos Palenzuela | Universitat de les Illes Balears | |
| Prof. Robert Massey | Royal Astronomical Society / University of Sussex | The University of Nottingham has an outstanding physics and astronomy department. Apart from the tragic impact on its talented employees, who are paying the price for institutional and government policy failure, this proposed near closure is sending a message to young people that there is no future in science. |
| Paola Popesso | ESO | |
| Chiara Ventura | INAF -Astronomical Observatory of Rome | I'm so scared and panicking about this, even for my country in a very close future. That must not happen anywhere in the world! |
| Alexandre Vazdekis | Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias | As a physicist from outside Nottingham, I am appalled by these plans. Solidarity with my colleagues there. The proposed compulsory redundancies will irreparably damage the teaching capacity, research excellence, and global reputation for short-term savings that will cost far more in the long run. The University of Nottingham should be protecting its strengths, not dismantling them. |
| Bruno Rodriguez Del Pino | Centro de Astrobiología, CSIC-INTA, Madrid, Spain | |
| Professor Jonathan Rae | Northumbria University | |
| Mohammad Akhlaghi | CEFCA | I have had the pleasure of working with astrophysicists at the University of Nottingham in the Euclid mission (by the European Space Agency), they made significant contributions to our scientific projects. I sincerely hope a better solution can be found to avoid such cuts and we can retain that wonderful talent that has grown there. |
| Ella Cole | University of Cambridge | |
| David Cerdeño | Institute for Theoretical Physics | The Department of Physics at Nottingham has long been regarded as a centre of excellence and international distinction, a reputation the university now risks undermining. |
| José R. Espinosa | IFT, Madrid | |
| Janet Anders | University of Exeter | I’m a quantum theorist and over many years I have interacted with researchers from the University of Nottingham’s Physics & Astronomy department. The scientific expertise they have as a team takes decades to build. Making compulsory redundancies will kill this flourishing climate and the expertise will move elsewhere. To the management: if you go ahead and have any shame, you will bear the burden of having sunk a flourishing and internationally highly visible department, as well as having jeopardised people’s personal livelihoods and families. Find a better, more moderate solution. That's a management job. |
| Yves Revaz | EPFL | |
| Dr. Eelco van Kampen | European Southern Observatory | Collaborating and having collaborated with a fair fraction of the staff now under threat, I can only see this as an utter waste of some of the best talent in astronomy, currently working in a very well functioning department. There is no excuse for just trying to kill that in such a devastating and irreversible fashion. |
| Jairo Mendez Abreu | University of La Laguna | |
| Dr Alexander Rawlings | Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik | Gobsmacked at the scale of these cuts... |
| Dr. Isaac Tutusaus | Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC, Barcelona) | |
| Davide Napolitano | University of Bologna and Institute of Radio Astronomy | |
| Santiago Avila | CIEMAT (Spanish National Laboratory for Energy) | It is with great sorrow that I hear the possibility of applying redundancies in the Physics and Astronomy department of the University of Nottingham. As a now established researcher in cosmology, I initiated my steps in cosmology and astronomy in the University of Nottingham as an exchange student in 2009. There, I initiated my first research project with Prof. Ed Copeland, whose lectures also motivated me to pursue a career in cosmology. I also later collaborated with Frazer Peace on my first paper for my PhD. I additionally know f other excellence professionals in the field, such as Clare Burrage and Alfonso Aragon-Salamanca. I hope that the University considers the importance of maintaining this high-quality team, a reference in the field. |
| Patrick Petitjean | Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris | |
| Prof. Andrzej Szelc | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr Harry Desmond | University of Portsmouth | Nottingham researchers have been an inspiration to me. This would be a tragedy. |
| Roger Horsley | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr. Yerong Xu | ICE-CSIC | I was an exchange undergraduate student at the University of Nottingham, UK, in 2018. Inspired by Prof. Meghan Gray at Nottingham, I embarked on my academic journey in astronomy. Now I am a postdoctoral fellow working on astrophysics. The Astronomy and Physics department has cultivated generations of scientists contributing to the development of society and has spread seeds over the world. It will be a huge loss to cut the Nottingham Astronomy Group. |
| Prof Oscar Cespedes | University of Leeds | |
| Alberto Fernandez-Soto | Instituto de Fisica de Cantabria (CSIC-UC), Spain | |
| David Galadí-Enríquez | Universidad de Córdoba (Spain) | Scientific departments cannot be managed with business criteria. |
| Ting-Yun Cheng | University of Groningen | |
| Dr Roland Timmerman | Durham University | As a current academic who was originally inspired by the Sixty Symbols videos produced at Nottingham and has since worked directly with researchers at the University of Nottingham, I can hardly think of a more damaging course of action to the future of fundamental research in the United Kingdom than the cuts proposed to the School of Physics and Astronomy. |
| Christian Koller | University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt | |
| Professor Christopher Lucas | University of Liverpool | |
| Mark Bason | Rutherford Appleton Laboratory | The proposed cuts to key staff members are short-sighted. If the UK wants to drive growth and innovation it needs to invest in science and institutions with strength and credibility - like Nottingham. This is the wrong way to go. |
| Rosa María González Delgado | Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC) | |
| Caro Nettekoven | University of Oxford | |
| Juan de Vicente | CIEMAT | |
| Anaïs Widmer | Université Paris Cité, APC | |
| Dr. Matilde Signorini | European Space Agency | |
| Martin Bourne | University of Hertfordshire | |
| Cheng Li | Department of Astronomy, Tsinghua University | |
| Dr Fergus Baker | The University of Newcastle upon Tyne | Solidarity! |
| Lydia Haacke | Swinburne University of Technology | |
| Prof. Santiago Arribas | CSIC, Madrid, Spain | |
| Sian Tedaldi | University of Oxford | This is extremely sad news. A strong STEM workforce is vital to the UK economy and to solving global challenges. Cutting funding and staff puts this at risk. |
| Prof. Konrad Kuijken | Leiden University; Honorary Professor at Nottinghem Physics & Astronomy | Seen from abroad the University of Nottingham physics and astronomy school looks exemplary. Over the past 2-3 decades its astronomy group has grown from almost nothing to a top institute doing excellent research and teaching, with a dynamic staff and a global reputation. Its innovative outreach reflects brightly onto the whole university. It is all too easy to damage it irreparably with draconic cuts. Surely the cost of so severely downsizing this department is far greater than the money-saving from a round of redundancies? |
| Dr Mark Greenaway | Loughborough University | |
| Prof. Constantinos Skordis | CEICO, Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences | Nottingham's School of Physics and Astronomy is a top physics department in the UK and worldwide, with potential Nobel prize awaiting. I was proud to be a staff member there some time ago, and still frequently collaborate with the particle theory group. I remember some outstanding students from my time there. Crippling the School by letting go 1/3 of staff is a bad and misguided managerial decision which can be irreversibly catastrophic. It will damage both student and staff confidence, and make it harder to get excellent hires in the future. If the Nottingham University leadership doesn't see this, then they shouldn't be leading. Instead, they should be throwing their strong support behind the department. |
| Tony Mroczkowski | Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) | |
| Gwendolyn Meeus | Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain | |
| Britton Smith | University of Edinburgh | Cutting staff from this internationally respected department will do lasting damage to the university and its mission. It will make the challenges faced there worse, not better. I urge the senior leadership team there to listen to their staff and work with them to find solutions. These people are there because they are capable and brilliant. Throwing away your most valuable resource is not the way forward. |
| Prof Malcolm Kadodwala | University of Glasgow | |
| Bailee Wolfe | Swinburne University of Technology | |
| Vinod Dhanak | University of Liverpool | |
| Luca Dellantonio | University of Exeter | The extremely high managerial wages exist because managers bear the responsibility during difficult times. Not the academics, the managers. |
| Dr. Fiorangela La Forgia | University of Padova | |
| Prof. Ignasi Ribas | Institute of Space Sciences (ICE, CSIC) & Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) | |
| Stephane Werner | Durham University | |
| Alberto Casas | Institute for Theoretical Physics (IFT), Madrid | |
| Ruth Carballo Fidalgo | Universidad de Cantabria, Dpto. de Matemática Aplicada y Ciencias de la Computación | |
| Nicola Gentile Fusillo | Università degli Studi di Trieste | |
| Yago Ascasibar | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) | I am astonished that I have to sign this petition, but I hope it contributes to prevent this madness from materialising |
| Aidan Arnold | University of Strathclyde | |
| Giuseppe Pileio | University of Southampton | |
| Prof. Ian Jack | University of Liverpool | |
| Prof. Alexander Shluger | UCL | Cuts like these in one of the best Physics and Astronomy departments harm the innovation and send wrong messages in the UK research community and internationally. |
| Dr James E. Robinson | The University of Edinburgh | |
| Erin Kara | MIT | |
| Mpati Ramatsoku | Rhodes University (South Africa) | |
| Prof. Dr. Reinhard Maurer | University of Warwick & University of Vienna | I have no hope that the people responsible for the mismanagement that has led to this situation will be brought to justice, but the idea of making blanket cuts to all departments is another bad management decision. Nottingham Physics is world-wide renowned. Please consider the standing of this important department and its critical role for the UK Physics education and research landscape |
| James Pearson | The Open University | As a former undergraduate and PhD student at UoN, I can attest to the incredibly supportive and collaborative atmosphere that the Physics and Astronomy staff provide, both in leading world-class research and to fostering the next generation of professional researchers. Fewer members of staff leads to fewer research areas and increased workloads for teaching and mentoring, resulting in a greatly reduced uptake of students. The loss of staff, however many or few, would be devastating to the University's reputation and contributions to STEM. |
| Sandeep Kumar Kataria | IIT Kanpur | Strongly disagree with this short sighted decision. |
| Francoise Combes | Paris Observatory | I sign to save Nottingham Physics and Astronomy |
| Gautam Nagaraj | EPFL | |
| Neel Shah | University of Portsmouth | |
| Ivan Rybak | Institute for Basic Science | |
| Assoc. Prof. Gwenaelle Douaud | University of Oxford | Another supremely short-sighted decision |
| Anlaug Amanda Djupvik | Nordic Optical Telescope, Aarhus University | |
| Dr Daniela Saadeh | Durham University | |
| Elena Colangeli | University of Portsmouth | |
| Prof. Leonhard Grill, FRSC | University of Graz, Austria | The cuts that are planned for the School of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Nottingham would damage a highly regarded and indeed world-renowned institution with an amazing number of excellent scientists and deep impact on research over the last decades. |
| David Corcoran | University of Limerick | Cutting staff in a world-renowned physics department is a false economy. University management should weigh the short-term budget fix against the long-term damage to its brand and its future ability to compete for talent and funding. There is surely a better way to solve this. |
| Dr Paul McMillan | University of Leicester | |
| Wasif Shaqil | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Lev Kantorovich | King's College London | The Physics at Nottingham is well recognised internationally as a high-ranking Department. I have been successfully collaborating with some of its members for a very long time. Specifically, in STM and AFM community the research (mostly experimental) performed over many years in this Department has been considered extremely influential internationally. It would be a shame, because of an obvious mismanagement, that people will be at risk of redundancy. That will effect the research and teaching, the Department will loose high quality stuff. This will affect the standing of physics in Nottingham internationally. We must stop this happening at all costs! |
| Zoë McGrath | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Prof. Michael Murphy | Swinburne University of Technology | It is difficult to conceive of a more ridiculous response to financial difficulty than to threaten the livelihoods of some of the best physicists and astronomers in the UK. The University should be treasuring these people, just like the international physics research community does, not undermining morale and productivity with these potential redundancies. I fully support this petition. The University should withdraw their threats and reconsider other ways to dig themselves out of a financial trouble with their staff, not cast them off as if that will ultimately help the University’s long-term position. |
| Anna Liptrott | Astrophysics Research Institute, Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Andrew Newsam | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Luciano Nicastro | INAF - OAS Bologna | |
| Dr Sian Phillips | Department of Astrophysics, University of Valencia, Spain | |
| Dr Sergi Sirera | University of Portsmouth | All the hard work put into building one of the UK's leading centres for Physics and Astronomy could be significantly undone overnight by short-sighted management. It feels like we're in a simulation, surely there have to be alternative solutions. |
| Dr Stuart McAlpine | Stockholm University | |
| Dr. Jonah Gannon | University of Toronto | |
| Dr Jean-Christophe Denis | University of Edinburgh | All my support to all the people affected by these terrible decisions and inadequate management. Beyond the immediate impact for the staff who is at risk of being sacked, the closure or almost closure of a physics department is a great loss for the country, at a time where science and innovation is shaping our society and create the pillars of a sustainable future and a strong, prosperous and powerful nation. Decisions like these, taken by university "leaders", putting their own interests first instead of the nation's and the public good, are simply and plainly wrong. |
| Daniel Roberts | University of Southampton | |
| Simon Ross | Durham University | |
| Benjamin Bose | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr. Emma Beasor | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Dr. Sebastian Kamann | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Dr Ian Clancy | University of Limerick | This is a poorly thought out decision by the University of Nottingham executive and should be revised. |
| Dr. Catherine Grant | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | |
| Dr Carrie Weidner | University of Bristol | My colleagues and collaborators at the University of Nottingham are inspirational, fantastic physicists and people. I call on the university to reverse this and preserve their livelihoods and those of their colleagues. |
| Renske Smit | Liverpool Johh Moores University | |
| Dr Joao M. Mendonca | University of Southampton | |
| Prof. Tom Hayward | University of Sheffield | Physics at Nottingham has an extraordinarily strong reputation within the Magnetism and Spintronics community and has retained this throughout my 23-year academic career. Recently it has pioneered the field of antiferromagnetic spintronics, which is a cutting-edge topic in the field. It is clear that staff at Nottingham are being punished for the actions of deeply mediocre academic leaders who have risked the financial security of the institution. The cuts must be stopped. |
| Francesco Shankar | University of Southampton | The research carried out in P&A at the University of Nottingham is outstanding, playing leading roles in several international programmes. This move will be extremely counterproductive with far-reaching negative consequences in the short and long run for many. |
| Mark Trodden | University of Pennsylvania | |
| Dr Phil Wiseman | University of Southampton | It is staggering that the consequences of long-term management mistakes should be borne out by those as distant from those decision-makers as the hard working staff of the department. |
| Dr Emma Alexander | University of Leeds | |
| Dr. Allison Noble | Arizona State University | |
| Lorena Hernández-García | Universidad Diego Portales (UDP), Chile | |
| Dr Kim Page | University of Leicester | |
| Samuel Franklin | University of Portsmouth | |
| Prof. Andrew Pratt | University of York | |
| Dr Rhys Seeburger | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Prof. Manda Banerji | University of Southampton | |
| Vida Saeedzadeh | The John Hopkins University | |
| Dr. Conor Omand | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Jonas Rademacker | University of Bristol | The university management is proposing to fix the problems its mismanagement caused by destroying the university itself. |
| Kamal Asadi | University of Bath | |
| Prof Andrew King | University of Leicester | |
| Benjamin Darwin Oppenheimer | University of Colorado, Boulder | |
| Giulia Giannini | ICE-CSIC Barcelona | To consider the high-level research conducted in the Physics and Astronomy Department at University of Nottingham redundant is offensive and dangerous. |
| Prof Raul Jimenez | ICREA & University of Barcelona | The Physics and Astronomy dept. at the University of Nottingham is one of the leading centers worldwide in theoretical cosmology. One of my former postdocs is a professor there. The amount of research, mentoring and teaching they provide is way above their size. They truly contribute to preserve, transmit and generate knowledge to the benefit of mankind. The right path of action is to *increase* their funding. |
| Nic Bonne | Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth | |
| Dr. Abinash Kumar Shaw | Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics | |
| Oles Bilobrov | Cardiff University | |
| Prof Dan Wilkins | The Ohio State University | |
| Professor Matt Darnley | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Roberto Cid Fernandes | Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina | |
| Bernardita Ried Guachalla | Stanford University | |
| Dr Ilaria Marini | European Southern Observatory | |
| Dr. Tristan Lawrie | University of Exeter | |
| Dr. Eric Miller | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | |
| Professor Gavin Bell | University of Warwick | |
| Antonia von Stauffenberg | Max Planck Institute for Astronomy | This is an absolute outrage. Academic staff should be supported, not cut. With the ongoing political situation in the US and budget cuts world wide, Astronomers are finding it harder and harder to secure a job position, even though there is more and more demand for cutting edge science. |
| Chrysa Avdellidou | University of Leicester | |
| Peter Smith | MPIA | |
| Prof. Steven Longmore | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Matthew Yusuf | University of Leeds | |
| Dr Carolin Villforth | University of Bath | |
| Dr Andrew Stannard | Imperial College London | |
| Dr. Andrew Hallam | University of Leeds | |
| Joseph Taylor | University of Leeds | |
| Sangwoo Park | Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute | |
| Dr. Daniel Baldwin | Sapienza Università di Roma | I completed the Mathematical Physics course at Nottingham and I owe so much to the department for the amazing education that I received there and for the interactions that I had with all the wonderful staff. |
| Emeritus Prof Julian Osborne | University of Leicester | Physics and Astronomy research at the University of Nottingham is very highly regarded. Graduates in these areas are amongst the highest-earning because of their transferable analytical skills. I urge those responsible to consider the effects of the proposed reductions on the economic vitality of its region, the attractiveness of the UK and the future reputation of the University, and to find a different solution to their problems. |
| Anatole Storck | University of Oxford | |
| Bhuvnesh Jain | University of Pennsylvania | |
| Thomas Okell | University of Oxford | I have collaborated with and admired the work of many in the MRI physicists based in Nottingham's School of Physics and Astronomy. There are so many exceptional researchers who produce world-leading research in diverse areas of our field. A loss of any of these people and the additional burden placed on those who remain would be a disaster for Nottingham and the global MRI community. I urge those involved to reconsider this decision. |
| Dr. Josh Borrow | University of Pennsylvania | |
| Prof. Karen Masters | Haverford College | This is an incredibly short sighted decision. Nottingham Physics and Astronomy is well known as a world leading department educating the next generation of leaders in the field and working on cutting edge research. |
| Mathias Weiden | University of California, Berkeley | |
| Ella Mann-Andrews | Lancaster University | I oppose the proposed compulsory redundancies in the School of Physics and Astronomy. Universities are an international resource, and physics research in particular underpins major global developments, from space science and JWST discoveries to AI, big data, and medical technologies. UK universities are one of the country’s key sources of global competitiveness, and long-term investment in research strength is essential, particularly in northern cities that help develop scientific capacity beyond London. Reducing staff risks weakening both research output and grant income, surely this isn't the way to save money. I'm sure for every £1 you pay the academics, they bring in more than £1 in equipment and in PhD/postdoc salaries through grants. There are likely better long-term solutions than compulsory redundancies, and these should be fully explored first. |
| Andrea Perdomo García | Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie | |
| Lennox Wood | University of Liverpool | |
| Zeeshan Ahmad | National Institute of Technology Patna | |
| Dr. Annagrazia Puglisi | University of Southampton | I stand in solidarity with colleagues at Nottingham, whose department represents an important and internationally respected part of the astrophysics community worldwide. Beyond the serious impact these proposed redundancies will have on affected individuals, and the importance of retaining the staff and expertise that sustain the department, I would also like to raise some broader systemic concerns from an EDI and governance perspective, particularly regarding the principles that may shape these decisions. If these proposed redundancies end up placing emphasis on external grant income and fellowship status, as public discussions may suggest, this risks narrowing the definition of academic value in deeply concerning ways. Universities depend not only on funded research but also on teaching, mentoring, technical expertise, and the less visible forms of academic labour that sustain departments and students alike. Additionally, access to research funding reflects many factors beyond research quality alone, including cumulative structural advantages and existing inequalities within academia. Any approach that places emphasis on prior funding success may risk reinforcing those inequalities while undervaluing the broader range of contributions that sustain a strong research community. At a time when the scientific community is investing significant effort into improving diversity, inclusion, accessibility, and retention within STEM, decisions of this kind risk sending the opposite message: that stability, contribution, and academic worth are becoming secondary to short-term financial considerations. Finally, these cuts risk increasing workloads for remaining staff, with unavoidable consequences for research quality and the student experience. They also risk damaging not only Nottingham’s international reputation, but the long-term sustainability and attractiveness of UK academia more broadly, further undermining stability in an already precarious research environment, particularly for early-career researchers and underrepresented groups. This feels profoundly short-sighted for both Nottingham and the wider UK academic community. |
| Dr Alex Richings | University of Hull | |
| Dr. Alessandro Loni | INAF - Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte, Italy | |
| Prof. Georg Held | Diamond Light Source | |
| Professor (Emeritus) John T Costello C.Phys., F.Inst.P. | Dublin City University | I thought that the UK had learned the downsides of downsizing its physical science departments and schools many years ago. Once done it becomes nigh impossible to reverse when the damage to reputation and competitiveness becomes manifest. Recruitment and retention of the very best staff becomes especially challenging, and the uncertainty generated in the minds of current staff and intending job applicants can spread beyond the department(s) affected. I would urge Notts UEB to reconsider the decision to reduce headcount in its excellent physics school and focus on investment and growth as e.g., Strathclyde did in the case of its now excellent physics department some years ago. |
| Dr Beatriz Campos Estrada | Max Planck Institute for Astronomy | |
| Dr Soraya Caixeiro | University of Bath | |
| Prof. Dmitry Solnyshkov | University Clermont Auvergne, France | |
| dr. Rogier Brussee | Eindhoven University of Technology | |
| Luigi Foschini | Brera Astronomical Observatory, INAF, Italy | |
| Brian McNamara | University of Waterloo | Dear Colleagues --The proposed course of action is unconscionable. I urge the University administration to reconsider and take a more progressive approach rather than one that will send the university into a reputational death spiral. |
| Rosa Calvi | INAF - OACN | |
| Ella Wood | University of Cambridge | |
| David Trevascus | Max Planck Institute for Astronomy | |
| Marine Prunier | UdeM - MPIA | |
| Francesco Belfiore | ESO Garching | |
| Aleksandra Bochenek | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Alessandra Mastrobuono Battisti | University of Padova | |
| Mark Wilkinson | University of Leicester | |
| Silas Beane | University of Washington | |
| Simon Bending | University of Bath | |
| Dr Mark Whitehead | University of Glasgow | |
| Jasleen Matharu | Max Planck Institute for Astronomy | |
| Prof. Ute Lisenfeld | University of Granada (Spain) | |
| Joerg Jaeckel | Heidelberg University | |
| Ian Varley | Nottingham Trent University | |
| Dr Mary Richardson-Slipper | University of Cambridge | |
| Prof Ivan Baldry | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Arjun Bagchi | Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur | |
| Sarah Whitehouse | University of Sheffield | |
| Marc Balcells | Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, UKRI (retired) | Researchers and students at the University of Nottingham School of Physics and Astronomy have a tremendous track record as powerful, creative users of the astronomical observatory facilities funded worldwide by the UK. They continue to do so today, giving their students unique hands-on training opportunities, making them leading players in the development of the technologies of today and tomorrow. I don’t want to underestimate the challenges of managing a higher-education institution in the current financial climate. But as noted by others, sudden drastic cuts just aren't the way to balance the books. The University of Nottingham should take note of how astronomy, and in particular its access to cutting-edge observatories, has led to sharp increases in physics enrollment at other UK universities. |
| Alexander Hogg | University of Glasgow | |
| Matthias Kluge | MPE | World-leading work on intracluster light is being done at Nottingham. |
| Ben Maughan | University of Bristol | Nottingham have a world-class astrophysics research group, and a thriving physics department. The proposed redundancies would irreversibly damage the capability of the department for research and teaching, and the reputation of the University for international colleagues and prospective students. |
| Professor Margaret Hall-Craggs | University College London | |
| Prof. Carlos Allende Prieto | Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias | |
| Yogesh Wagh | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Professor Andrew Bagshaw | University of Birmingham | This is a short sighted decision, Physics and Astronomy is one of the crown jewels of the University of Nottingham with a world class reputation. |
| Professor Andrew David Lawrence | University of Edinburgh | Solidarity with colleagues in Nottingham |
| Martin Bencsik | Nottingham Trent University | It seems to me that we are living an accelerating evolution towards self-destruction. If Charles Darwin was staff at the University of Nottingham, would they get of him ? Surely they would, he never secured any research grant. Good luck to all the excellent staff at the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Nottingham. This threat on your positions can only be an inconsiderate, short sighted, and self-destructive insult on your world-class scientific excellence. |
| Dr. Michael Healy-Kalesh | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Katrien Segaert | University of Birmingham | |
| Tim Gershon | University of Warwick | |
| Sunil Choudhary | University of Western Australia | What is happening with School of Physics & Astronomy at Nottingham is really unfortunate. I standby the people who are going through this tough time. |
| Dr Sebastian C. Coleman | The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto | |
| Dr Daniel J Farrow | University of Hull | |
| Dr Sadie Jones | University of Southampton | |
| Ashley Pitt | University of Surrey | An extremely short-sighed decision which I hope is not implemented. |
| Agatha Lenartowicz, PhD | University of California Los Angeles | The gutting of a world class department is not the effective or ethical path to fiscal stability. |
| Prof. Peter Wheatley | University of Warwick | I'm shocked by the short-sightedness of this decision, which is not only a disaster for the individual staff involved, but will permanently damage the reputation of a world-class institution and push it into long-term decline. There is still time to reverse course. |
| Mustafa A. Amin | Rice University | It is a privilege to collaborate with and learn from colleagues in Physics and Astronomy at Nottingham. |
| Prof Angus Hunter | Nottingham Trent University | I strongly urge University of Nottingham to reconsider reducing staff numbers in this school - it is responsible for world class research with real impact in improving lives |
| Max Davies | University of Leeds | |
| Dr. Kwasi A. Kwakwa | Wellcome Sanger Institute | |
| Dr. David Law | Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) | |
| Ascension del Olmo Orozco | Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), Spain | |
| Joaquin Delgado | Departamento de Matemáticas Universidad Autónoma Meteopolitana Iztapalapa | This is a tío research academic Group that must be retained. Basic Science is not a luxury. History has shown that contribution in basic Science very soon impacts Society. |
| Prof. Daniel H. McIntosh | University of Missouri | |
| Brett Andrews | University of Pittsburgh | |
| Eilish McLoughlin | Dublin City University | I strongly support this petition to request University of Nottingham to reconsider proposed compulsory redundancies. |
| Diego Blas | ICREA/IFAE | |
| Prof. Mark Wyatt | Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge | |
| Professor Mark Hindmarsh | University of Helsinki and University of Sussex | How can a wealthy university like Nottingham have to make such draconian cuts? Looks like typical management stunt: blow up a difficulty into a crisis, sack people, and then hire a new set working in the latest "strategic" trend dreamed up on the last away day. |
| Ludo Fraser-Taliente | Carnegie Mellon University | |
| Marco Lombardi | University of Milan | |
| Segev BenZvi | University of Rochester | "I chose my university for its administrators!" is a statement that no student has ever said, nor will ever say. The greatness of the university is its scholarship. Keep the physicists and the astronomers, and let the administrators justify their jobs. |
| Christoph Adam | Universidad de Santiago de Compostela | |
| Dr Renald Schaub | University of St Andrews | The proposed cuts to the School of Physics and Astronomy would be an act of self-harm for Nottingham University and a blow to British science. This is a top-tier department doing vital fundamental research. Dismantling it makes a mockery of any claim to academic ambition. The decision speaks to a profound failure of judgment at leadership level. |
| Daniele Manuzzi | University of Bologna | |
| Alberto Alonso-Izquierdo | University of Salamanca | |
| Dr Jonas Lindert | University of Sussex | |
| Dr Dave Sutherland | University of Glasgow | Physics and Astronomy in Nottingham does first rate work. The proposed redundancies would do serious harm to the University's reputation and to the physics community as a whole. |
| Dr. Sebastian Ellis | King's College London | |
| Roberta Vieliute | University of St Andrews | |
| Prof Shiho Kobayashi | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Dr Michal Kreps | University of Warwick | |
| Prof. Robin Erbacher | University of California, Davis | The field of physics underpins all other sciences. One cannot truly understand chemistry, biology, medicine, engineering without understanding physics. It is foundational. In addition, the study of physics itself has led to countless breakthroughs in not only understanding our world, our climate, our origins, and our universe, but also it has led to innumerable discoveries and inventions that have directly benefited society. These range from the discovery of the electron and understanding of quantum mechanics which has led us to the computer and technology revolution, to the invention of the World Wide Web by particle physicists at international laboratories, given the necessity of global collaboration and communication in science. For the UK and for Nottingham University to remain relevant in an increasingly global world and economy, and given the increasingly international nature of collaboration and scientific readiness, it *must* remain invested in physics, and maintain a healthy and well-staffed School of Physics and Astronomy. In most cases, trimming administration and looking for efficiencies in those areas pays much better dividends than cutting the scientific workforce. |
| Dr. Cristina Ramos Almeida | Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias | |
| Prof. F. Stefan Tautz, PhD | Forschungszentrum Jülich | |
| Dr Thomas Jones | Lancaster University | |
| Dr William Luke Matthewson | Korea Astronomy and Space science Institute | |
| Dr. Patricia Diego Palazuelos | Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics | |
| Justin Wells | University of Oslo | |
| Michael Hunt | Durham University | |
| Wietske van der Zwaag | Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences | |
| Katherine Ormerod | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Álvaro Ribas | Queen Mary University of London | |
| Tommaso Treu | University of California Los Angeles | |
| Prof Scott Trager | Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, and Scientific Director of NOVA | Nottingham Physics and Astronomy hosts one of the world's best astronomy groups, full of top astronomers and astrophysicists; moreover, the students the group trains go on to be world leaders themselves. The proposed reduction in staff would be more than a tragedy -- it would be a terrible waste of an excellent group and a massive blow to UoN's global reputation. It would be very hard for UoN to recover from such damage. |
| Dr Hamza Waseem | Department of Physics, University of Oxford | |
| Dr Chris Copperwheat | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Smadar Naoz | UCLA | |
| Carsten van de Bruck | The University of Sheffield | |
| Dr Matthew Wadge | Manchester Metropolitan University | |
| Vasundhara Shaw | University of Manchester | |
| Prof Barbara Ryden | The Ohio State University | |
| Luke Dones | Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado | |
| Dr. Kirill Sokolovsky | Texas Tech University | |
| Kaustubh Rajesh Gupta | Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology | |
| Prof. Joop Schaye | Leiden University | |
| Maria J. Jimenez Donaire | Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore (STScI) | Cutting funds to this high impact department will directly threaten our ability to explore the universe and inspire the next generation of physicists and astronomers. |
| Prof Stephen Mayhew | Aston University | |
| Pedro Villalba Gonzalez | University of British Columbia | |
| Richard Loosemore | Wells College | I object to the way that the University has miscalculated the impact of these cuts and urge it to use natural attrition instead. |
| Dr. Clara Brasseur | Lowell Observatory | |
| Prof. Enrico Maria Corsini | University of Padova | |
| Prof. Sergei Nayakshin | University of Leicester | |
| Eoin Griffin | University of Manchester innovation factory | The physics department was instramental in me perusing higher degrees in physics, the academics were fantastic. along side the cutting edge innovations coming through UoN this will leave a large gap in the advanced tech spinout world |
| Prof. Josef Pradler | University of Vienna | |
| Andreas Larsson | Luleå University of Technology | |
| Prof. Martin Hardcastle | University of Hertfordshire | |
| Dr Alfredo O Rodriguez | Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Iztapalapa, México | As a former research student, I strongly oppose the proposed compulsory redundancies of academic staff. This move would destroy the mentorship and continuity that make postgraduate research possible. Redundancies leave current students without supervisors, break up established research teams, and damage the university's reputation for years to come. The University of Nottingham taught me to value people over process. I call on leadership to withdraw redundancy notices and pursue these alternatives immediately. |
| Professor Xavier Calmet | University of Sussex | |
| Dr Andrey V. Gorbach | University of Bath | |
| Dr Paul Streeter | The Open University | |
| Eduardo Battaner | University of Granada | |
| Prof. Ingmar Swart | Utrecht University | |
| Prof. Michael Cooper | UC Irvine | |
| Elias Kiritsis | APC, Universite de Paris, Cite | |
| Daniel Capela | University of St Andrews | |
| Bret Lehmer | University of Arkansas | |
| Prof. Mihalis Dafermos | University of Cambridge and Princeton University | |
| Dimitri Veras | University of Warwick | |
| Prof. Sarah Tuttle | University of Washington, Seattle | It is heartbreaking to see these impacts, and to see another university failing to manage itself. When we break up departments like this, reconstituting them is practically impossible - people and their expertise is dispersed, and the university's reputation discourages any sort of future support. Losing this wonderful department will cost much more than the money you think you are saving. |
| Prof Glenn J White | The Open University | A sad testament of today’s academic world that cuts of this magnitude can be threatened. The Nottingham group are amongst world leaders in their research, and astrophysics course content remains a strong reason for bringing young people into STEM and related areas, and raising their expertise and excitement in areas that are of great benefit to UK PLC. The threats are short-sighted and will harm both the university’s reputation and that of the UK as a leading scientific nation. Please reconsider. |
| Nicole Nesvadba | Laboratoire Lagrange, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur | |
| Cyril Closset | University of Birmingham | |
| Professor Carles Badenes | University of Pittsburgh | |
| Chanda Prescod-Weinstein | University of New Hampshire | |
| Prof. Enda McGlynn, C.Phys., F.Inst.P. | School of Physical Sciences, Dublin City University | I sincerely hope that the University of Nottingham will reconsider this decision which threatens the stability and future of the School of Physics and Astronomy, which is a world-class centre for physics teaching and research, and an absolute jewel in the University's crown. The School and its staff should be viewed in this light and cherished by the University, not put under threat. |
| Professor Dan Smith | University of Hertfordshire | This madness and wilful mismanagement cannot be allowed to happen - stop the redundancies. |
| Javier Alonso Santiago | INAF - Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania | |
| Dr. Duncan Watts | University of Oslo | |
| Edward Hardy | University of Oxford | |
| Prof. Jonathan Home | ETH Zürich | |
| Dr Nicole Vogt | New Mexico State University | |
| José Pedro Marques | Radboud University, the Netherlands | It is a great school. It has shaped and contonies shaping medical imaging and neuroscience... Showing physics matters |
| Thomas Van Riet | Leuven University | |
| Eleonora Di Valentino | University of Sheffield | |
| Renee Hlozek | University of Toronto | |
| Chris North | Cardiff University | |
| Marco Bruni | University of Portsmouth | |
| Nikolina Sarcevic | Duke university | |
| Prof. David Kaiser | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | |
| Damien Easson | Arizona State University | |
| Dr. Javier Rubio | Universidad Complutense de Madrid | |
| Dr Daniel Ballard | University of Sydney | |
| Harry Stephenson | Lancaster University | The cuts at the University of Nottingham are heartbreaking. The loss to various collaborations which Nottingham Physics and Astronomy contribute significantly to internationally would be devastating. The United Kingdom needs frontier research groups like those at Nottingham to continue to inspire the next generation of physicists |
| Dr. Darshan Kakkad | University of Hertfordshire | |
| Dr Chris Harrison | Newcastle University | |
| Prof Andrea Banfi | University of Sussex | Another appalling decision by the UK's leadership establishment, which seems to be actively pursuing the dismantling of science excellence in the country. I express my wholehearted solidarity to my colleagues in Nottingham, and hope that sense prevails and cuts are reversed. |
| Prof. Benjamin Robinson | Lancaster University | |
| Prof Ignatius McGovern | Trinity College Dublin | |
| Federico Matteucci | Karlsruhe Institute of Technology | |
| Klaudia Protušová | Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Heidelberg | |
| Dr. María del Carmen Argudo-Fernández | University of Granada | |
| Dr Vid Irsic | University of Hertfordshire | |
| Prof. Björn Penning | University of Zürich | |
| Prof. Amina Helmi | University of Groningen | |
| Helen Gourlay | University College London | To give up on physics and chemistry is to give up on being a serious academic institution. You damage the intellectual fabric within and beyond the East Midlands. |
| Prof. Hervé Bouy | Université de Bordeaux | |
| Professor Bill Chaplin | University of Birmingham | |
| Sandro Mereghetti | INAF IASF MILANO | |
| Prof. Rien van de Weygaert | Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen | |
| Dr. Carlos Viscasillas Vázquez | Vilnius University | |
| Prof. dr. Leon V.E. Koopmans | University of Groningen | I am deeply concerned by the proposed cuts and compulsory redundancies in the School of Physics and Astronomy. Nottingham has built an internationally respected department through the dedication of its academic and technical staff, whose work supports outstanding teaching, world-leading research, and the next generation of scientists. These proposals would not only affect people’s lives and careers, but would also cause lasting damage to students, research, and the University’s reputation. I sincerely urge the University to reconsider and to work constructively with staff and unions to find alternatives that protect Physics and Astronomy at Nottingham. |
| Dr. Christopher Haines | Universidad de Atacama, Chile | |
| Alex Krolewski | University of Waterloo | |
| Robert Dickinson | University of Manchester | |
| Suresh Govindarajan | Indian Institute of Technology Madras | This move is a retrograde one. |
| Adrià Delhom | Universidad Complutense de Madrid | |
| Diego Perugini | Ipht | |
| Piyush Grover | University of Nebraska-Lincoln | |
| Rhys Morris | University of Bristol | Physics is vital and should be in every University. |
| Mohamed Anber | Durham University | |
| Joe Williams | University of Exeter | Being an alumni, I am shocked and appalled that the University would move to make such drastic cuts to an excellent department and lose so many brilliant minds. |
| Dr Imogen Whittam | University of Oxford | |
| Floris Prins | Kapteyn institute | |
| Dr Marie Rider | University of Bath | |
| Dimona Videnlieva | University of Glasgow | |
| Alex Laguë | University of Pennsylvania | |
| Prof. Thijs van der Hulst | Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen | Please be careful. It will be difficult to build up the expertise and excellence again that you are about to destroy. Avoid shortsightedness. |
| Steven N. Shore | Astrofisica, Dip. di Fisica "Enrico Fermi", Univ. di Pisa | |
| Sven M. van den Bergh | Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (University of Groningen) | |
| Dr Manuel Reichert | University of Sussex | |
| Natalie Shenker | Imperial College London | |
| Miguel Querejeta | National Astronomical Observatory, Madrid | |
| Prof. Karina Caputi | Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, U. of Groningen | |
| Prof. Xiaohui Fan | University of Arizona | |
| Elena | Zucca | in support to Nottingham School of Physics and Astronomy |
| Prof. Marc A.W. Verheijen | University of Groningen, Kapteyn Astronomical Institute | |
| Dr. Gabriele Pezzulli | Kapteyn Astronomical Institute | |
| Daniele Oriti | Universidad Complutense de Madrid | |
| Professor Per Barth Lilje | University of Oslo, Norway | |
| Prof René Oudmaijer | Royal Observatory of Belgium / University of Leeds | |
| Martyna Winiarska | Durham University | |
| Diego Sáez-Chillón Gómez | University of Valladolid | |
| Dr Laura Corner | University of Liverpool | |
| Bjarki Björgvinsson | Durham University | |
| Frederik Schenk | Stockholm University | |
| Dr Mikako Matsuura | Cardiff University | |
| Owen Jessop | Durham University | This is outrageous |
| Bénite Tantely | Durham University | |
| Sameeksha Saini | Durham University | |
| Lucy | Northeastern Illinois University | |
| Tom Shanks | Durham University | Too much power has been moved away from departmental Boards of Studies in all UK universities resulting in poorer centralised decision making than previously and leading to disastrous situations like this where excellent research groups like Nottingham’s astrophysics group are threatened with closure. |
| Xander Byrne | University of Cambridge | |
| Salome Mtchedlidze | University of Bologna | |
| Dr John Samson | Loughborough University | |
| Pablo Rodríguez-Gil | IAC | |
| Elena Pancino | INAF Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri | |
| Prof. Duncan Forbes | Swinburne university | Cutting academic staff is not the solution if Nottingham wants to be a serious university. |
| Jorge Moreno | Pomona College (USA) | Please revert this decision, which will harm the entire astronomical community. |
| Francesca Vidotto | IEM-CSIC Madrid | Research and education are a signature of an heathy society, cutting them in their excellence branch do not solve the problem but actually accelerate the disease. |
| Richard Battye | University of Manchester | |
| Dr. Keith Glennon | OIST | Beyond shameful. |
| Christopher K. Long | University of Cambridge | |
| Jessica Doppel | Durham University | |
| Alejandra Recio-Blanco | Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur - France | |
| Katherine Lee | Uppsala University | |
| Dr. Prakash Gaikwad | Indian Institute of Technology, Indore | |
| Prof Andy Wright FREng | University of Glasgow | I realise these are difficult times but astronomy at the University of Nottingham is jewel of international standing that should not be lost |
| Prof Joss Bland-Hawthorn, Director | University of Sydney, Australia | Physics departments as at Nottingham lie at the intellectual heart of the world’s leading universities. Excellence in physics has historically driven major advances across science, engineering, and technology, shaping both fundamental knowledge and practical innovation. The strength of a university’s physics department is closely associated with its broader academic reputation and research culture. Sustained investment in physics therefore plays a central role in maintaining the global standing and scientific leadership of top universities. |
| Henk Hoekstra | Leiden University | |
| Tanya Urrutia | Leibniz Institut für Astrophysik, Potsdam | |
| Hannah Wakeford | University of Bristol | |
| Prof. Samaya Nissanke | DESY, DZA (German centre for astrophysics), University of Potsdam | |
| Eric Emsellem | European Southern Observatory, Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon | Head of Project Science |
| Scott Hawley | Chemistry & Physics Dept, Belmont University | |
| Professor Neil Wilson | University of Warwick | |
| Daniel Litim | University of Sussex | This makes no sense at all. |
| Dr George Seabroke | University College London | |
| Prof. Michael Irwin | Cambridge University | |
| David Burton | ||
| Michael Brown | Monash University | The destruction of university departments in the UK and elsewhere will have a lasting negative impact on not just academia and science but adversely impact the broader knowledge in the community that enables societal and economic growth. |
| Andrina Nicola | University of Manchester | |
| Dr Aswin P Vijayan | University of Sussex | |
| Ioannis Rousochatzakis | Loughborough University | |
| Enrica Bellocchi | Universidad Complutense de Madrid | |
| Karolis Daugevičius | Center for Physical Sciences and Technology (FTMC), Lithuania | |
| Prof. Renbin Yan | The Chinese University of Hong Kong | Cutting academic staff is not the solution. Letting these talented people go would lower the ranking of the University and you would lose more money in the longer term than what you may save in the short term. |
| Eugenia Colafranceschi | Universidad Complutense de Madrid | |
| Prof Bobby Acharya | International Centre for Theoretical Physics | I have been a visiting professor and collaborator at the University of Nottingham over the years and its impact on the physics community has been significant both in terms of research and the development of researchers as you can see from the other comments. To see the physics department potentially being dismantled in this way due to mismanagement of the university is shocking and will have a long lasting detrimental impact. |
| Seth Jacobson | Michigan State University | |
| Thomas Hajnik | Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge | |
| Matthew Kenworthy | Leiden Observatory | |
| Anna Ferre Mateu | Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias | |
| Vlado Lazarov | University of York | |
| Paul B Rimmer | Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge | Such a decision would destroy a world-class department and irreprably harm the reputation of what is presently a great university. |
| Natalia Sikora | Swansea University | |
| Ivonne Zavala | Swansea University | |
| Sandro Tacchella | Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge | |
| Prof. Blake Sherwin | University of Cambridge | |
| Robert C Welsh | UCLA | I urge the leadership at University of Nottingham to reassess the redudancy decision. Once gone, it's extremely difficult if not impossible to build the intellectual captial and intellectual synergy with such proposed action. The damage done is swift and long lasting. |
| Prof. Andrew J. Tolley | Imperial | |
| Chris Ringeval | CURL, IRMP, UCLouvain | It is quite surprising to see that the University of Nottingham has the desire to get ride of its scientific excellence and to significantly contribute to UK brain drain. For sure, if these actions take place, it will be remembered as a leading actor. On a pragmatic matter, it would be appreciable if the University of Nottingham could inform oversea institutions, well in advance, of the academic positions set to go: this would allow them to be prepare for brain gain... |
| Davide Fontana | Queen Mary University of London | |
| Prof. Matthew Wingate | University of Cambridge | |
| Maciej Kendziorek | University of Groningen | |
| Carlos Nunez | Swansea University | |
| Johannes Knolle | TU Munich | |
| Gianmassimo Tasinato | Swansea University | |
| Chris Allton | Swansea University | Horrendous short-term-ism which will cull the department. All caused by UK-wide funding crisis and University of Nottingham's leaders' inept strategic decisions. Nottingham's reputation now toast. |
| Joris van Slageren | University of Stuttgart | |
| Dr. Laura Iacconi | Queen Mary University of London | |
| Jay Farihi | University College London | |
| Dr Charlie Devlin | University of Liverpool | |
| Ruben Perez, Director of IFIMAC | IFIMAC, Condensed Matter Physics Center, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid | |
| Prof Pedro Ferreira | University of Oxford | This is world leading department, with a fantastic track record developed over many decades. It shows a remarkable lack of common sense that the University would want to cause so much damage. The reputational loss will be catastrophic. |
| Dr Sophie Koudmani | University of Hertfordshire | |
| Christophe Pichon | Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris | I follow Peacock's reasoning |
| Yiannis Tsapras | Heidelberg University | |
| Gulay Gurkan | University of Hertfordshire | |
| Prof. Davide Gerosa | University of Milano-Bicocca | |
| Prof. Aires Ferreira | University of York | Physics departments are key long-term strategic assets, whose value cannot be measured in short-term financial terms. Universities have a responsibility not only to balance budgets, but also to protect the intellectual infrastructure on which present and future innovation depends. I urge Nottingham's senior leadership to rethink this approach immediately before the damage becomes irreversible. |
| Neil Turok | University of Edinburgh | The School of Physics and Astronomy at Nottingham University has gained a worldwide reputation for the quality of its highly innovative research. It has succeeded in attracting some of the very best young researchers worldwide. The proposed redundancies are shocking and will adversely affect the reputation of the University for years to come. |
| Ryan Stewart | The University of Melbourne | Seeing decisions like these, I have to ask; what is University for? What future does an institution hope to have by diminishing itself. I urge academic institutions globally to focus on spearheading a prosperous future. |
| Dr Daniel Lee | The University of Manchester | |
| Subhanjoy Mohanty | Imperial College London | A university IS its academic staff; one cannot fire the latter and expect to remain the former. |
| Sukrit Ranjan | University of Arizona | For over 5 centuries the UK has been a leading center of scientific research, and this leadership has underlied its prosperity and power. I urge the UK to continue to invest in its future by investing in Nottingham astronomy to promote its continued technical excellence. |
| Joaquim M. Gomes | University of Liverpool | |
| Alba Vidal García | Observatorio Astronómico Nacional | |
| Matthijs van der Wild | Durham University | |
| Wibeke Nordhøy | Oslo university hospital | I support the staff |
| Prof. Dr. Michela Mapelli | Heidelberg University, Germany | |
| Dr. Kota Numajiri | YITP, Kyoto University | |
| Diogo Feranandes | Amsterdam umc | |
| Dr Anke Ardern-Arentsen | University of Cambridge | |
| Prof. Sergey Sibiryakov | McMaster University & Perimeter Institute | |
| Prof Xavier Golay | University College London | Nottingham University is one of the birthplaces of Magnetic Resonance Imaging. It has one of the strongest Physics Departments in the Country. Destroying it in this way just shows the level of incompetence of the senior management. |
| Amedeo Romagnolo | University of Heidelberg | |
| Professor Gavin Dalton | University of Oxford | |
| Prof Jonathan Finley | Technical University of Munich | |
| Lillie Szemraj | Princeton University | |
| Prof. Simon Glover | University of Heidelberg | |
| Priscilla Canizares | University of Cambridge | |
| Dr. Konstantin Riabinin | Heidelberg University | |
| David Seery | University of Sussex | |
| Dr Rubén Sánchez-Janssen | Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes | |
| Prof Michael McDonald | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Nottingham has an incredibly strong astrophysics group that I am consistently impressed by and envious of. It would be a huge loss to see it carved up. |
| Prof. Viviana Acquaviva | CUNY | |
| Abhinna Sundar Samantaray | Astronomisches-Rechen Institut (ARI), Universität Heidelberg | It is a strange decision. As a Phd student, it feels so bad to know this. |
| Anna Slater | University of Liverpool | |
| Dr Joseph Woods | University of Bern | |
| Athul Soman | SISSA, Trieste | |
| Mariano Dominguez | iATE-OAC-UNC and RFC-ULS | My strong support for my colleagues in Nottingham P&A! |
| YESHPAL SINGH | University of Birmingham | Physics is important for future of any society: Skill development through student's training, new technologies e.g. Quantum Tech and Quantum Information..... |
| Professor Adrian Kent | University of Cambridge | Nottingham has a world class physics and astronomy department, as its research and teaching ratings attest. The proposed cuts would have a devastating effect on UK physics at a time when there is a huge need for the critical skills and expertise that a physics degree brings. |
| Professor Ian Moss | Newcastle University | |
| Dr. Isaac Ehle | CNRS / Université de Toulouse | |
| Roger Davies | University of Oxford | How can it have come to this? One of the UK‘s leading Physics and Astronomy departments under threat in this way. The senior management of Nottingham University need to look at themselves in the mirror and ask the question whether it isn’t they that should pay the price rather than their eminent hard-working faculty. |
| Daniel Marín Pina | Heidelberg Universität - ITA | |
| Dr Sebastian W Rieger | University of Oxford | The proposal to address the university’s financial problems by large scale compulsory redundancies makes perfect sense - if the only goal is balancing the books and making the numbers look good for just long enough to to move on elsewhere and escape accountability for the consequences. I wonder why that sounds so familiar. |
| Prof. Dr. Christiane Koch | Freie Universität Berlin, Germany | |
| Bahar Bidaran | University of Granada | |
| Prof. Sébastien Renaux-Petel | CNRS - Institut d'astrophysique de Paris | |
| Viv Kendon | University of Strathclyde | |
| Prof Irene D'Amico FInstP | University of York | |
| Giulia Ferrini | Chalmers | |
| Leticia Tarruell | ICFO | |
| Juan Macías-Pérez | LPSC Grenoble, CNRS | |
| Dr. Andreas Sander | ZAH/ARI, Universität Heidelberg | |
| Prof Roberto Emparan | ICREA & Universitat de Barcelona | |
| Dr Rohit Chikkaraddy | University of Birmingham | |
| Prof. Elham Kashefi | Quantum Software Lab, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh | Quantum information science is in continuous, deep dialogue with fundamental physics: atomic, condensed matter, mathematical, optical, etc. Removing twenty staff from a department of Nottingham's standing severs that dialogue in one place irreversibly: the lost expertise trains the next generation of quantum scientists, and it is built over decades, not budget cycles. I add my voice in solidarity with colleagues whose research I have long respected. |
| Professor George Miley | Leiden University, Emeritus Royal Netherlands Academy Professor, Honoray Doctorate, Trinity College Dublin | Unfortunately, this seems to be yet another narrow bureaucratic measure designed to achieve short-term economic savings, without taking into account the long-term economic consequences of decimating such a prestigious department. Have the decision makers considered the value of observing time won by talented staff of the department on multi-billion international scientific observing facilities? Have they calculated how many students are drawn to Nottingham because of the popular outreach and public visibility that such research produces? Have they considered the long-term cost to the prestige of Nottingham and the surrounding region due the resultant reduced publicity? Have they considered the long-term cost of the loss of students drawn to science by physics and astronomy and subsequently embark on careers in technologies such as ICT and AI? Do think again. |
| Prof Dr Giovanna Morigi | Saarland University | |
| Said Ergoktas | University of Bath | |
| Prof. Anja Metelmann | Karlsruhe Institute of Technolgy | |
| Prof. Alexander Tsirlin | Leipzig University | |
| Natalie Hogg | University of Cambridge | When will universities learn that it is their academics who are their greatest asset? Solidarity with Nottingham physicists and astronomers. |
| Dr Christian Clear | Imperial College London | |
| Lucas Tortora | University of Cambridge | |
| Dong Ha Lee | University of Sheffield | |
| Dr. Lucas de Sá | Universität Heidelberg | |
| Dr Robin Catchpole | Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge | |
| Joao Rafael Lucio dos Santos | UFCG Brazil and University of Heidelberg, Germany | |
| Inga Kamp | Kapteyn Astronomical Institute | |
| Louis Giannone | Private | Surely people this branch of physics is important enough for alternatives to such drastic measures to be found |
| Elena Paulus | Saarland University | |
| Konstantinos Migkas | Leiden University | |
| Prof. Dr. Eva K. Grebel | Astronomisches Rechen-Institut (director), Heidelberg University | Astronomy is a powerful driver of engagement in STEM and plays a vital role in developing future scientific leaders. Cutting an internationally respected Astrophysics department through major redundancies would result in a serious loss of talent, damage the University’s global reputation, and weaken both research and teaching excellence. Given the department’s world-leading research achievements and success in attracting outstanding young researchers, dismantling it would be a deeply short-sighted decision, as such excellence cannot be quickly rebuilt once lost. |
| Eoin O Colgain | Atlantic Technological University | |
| Marilù Chiofalo | University of Pisa | Physics - especially with quantum science and technology - is currently at center stage of one of the most profound transformations lived by humankind, that is reshaping the way society, economics, and labor market work. This should indeed be the time to increase the number of positions in education and research institutions. |
| Prof. Simon Goodwin | University of Sheffield | |
| Prof. Jailson Alcaniz | National Observatory - Brazil | |
| Dr. Dr.h.c. Natascha Forster Schreiber | Max-Planck-Institute for extraterrestrial Physics | |
| Craig McRae | University of Manitoba | Shrinking down like this makes the whole world poorer. |
| Jordan A. Simpson | NTNU | |
| Ido Ben-Dayan | Ariel University | |
| Rik Achten | Ghent University, Belgium | Nothingham Physics Department and Astronomy has been very valuable for the advancement of MRi and still is. But teaching is the start. I advice to reconsider the redundancy plan and look at the other proposed option. |
| Dominic Wearne | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Prof Jon Urrestilla | University of the Basque Country | |
| Bertrand Goldman | International Space University | you've got my strongest support, physics and astronomy must remain an integral part of Nottingham education and research |
| Prof Lotte Hollands | Heriot-Watt University | |
| Dr Scott Melville | Queen Mary University of London | |
| Dr Makars Šiškins | University of Southampton | |
| Professor Kelly Holley-Bockelmann | Vanderbilt University | |
| Matteo Fasiello | IFT Madrid, Spain | It would be a tremendous loss for the international physics community were such an outstanding department to be diminished |
| Simin Tong | University of Leicester | |
| Douglas Scott | University of British Columbia | Nottingham has a great reputation in physics and astronomy and this plan seems incredibly short-sighted. |
| Dr. Nadine Afram | University of Zurich | |
| David W. Hogg, Professor of Physics and Data Science | New York University | |
| Prof. Hélène Perrin | CNRS, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord | |
| Marisol Cruz | Swansea University | |
| Maximilian Detering | King's College London | |
| Noemi Frusciante | Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II | |
| Marco Drewes | UCLouvain | |
| Dr Aidan Wiederhold | University of Manchester | |
| Tapio Ala-Nissila | Loughborough and Aalto University | I personally know several colleagues in Physics and I have the highest respect on them. It does not make *any* sense to cripple one of the best departments at N’ham. It takes decades to build reputation but only one poor decision to destroy it. |
| Quentin Parker | The University of Hong Kong | Astrrophysics and increasing space science are key hooks for students into more general STEM education subjects and subsequent careers - domains key to any nations prosperity, Times are tough but gutting area of such indirect contributions to a nations future is short sighted and counter productive |
| Chiara Gattinoni | King’s College London | |
| Dr. Alexey Elykov | Karlsruhe Institute of Technology | |
| Brian Shuve | Harvey Mudd College | |
| Prof. Perry Aliado | Contra Costa College | |
| Kai Wu | Astronomisches Rechen-Institut, Universität Heidelberg | |
| Prof. Isabel Pérez | Universidad de Granada | |
| Alma Sebastian | Swinburne University of Technology | |
| Prof Rene Breton | University Manchester | |
| Prof. Konstantinos Dimopoulos | Lancaster University | This assault on science is an attack to human civilisation. No passaran! |
| Ancy Anna John | University of Birmingham | |
| Dr. Joscha Jahns-Schindler | Swinburne University of Technology | |
| Michel van Garrel | University of Birmingham | |
| Antonio Moro | Northumbria University Newcastle | |
| Dr. Anthony G.A. Brown | Leiden University, Leiden Observatory | |
| Dr Benjamin Elder | Imperial College London | This is one of the strongest physics departments in the world. These cuts are extremely short-sighted. If they go ahead the university will struggle to attract talent of their calibre in the future. It is also extraordinarily unfair to the entire department, especially those whose jobs are on the line. |
| Nikolaos Tetradis | University of Athens | |
| Riotto Antonio | University of Geneva | |
| Dr. Freya Johnson | Imperial College London | |
| Alex Swash | University of Wrocław | |
| Dr Katy Clough | Queen Mary University of London | Nottingham staff are core members of the scientific community, dedicated educators, and normal hardworking people who deserve to have their jobs protected, not carelessness and ruthlessly cut at part of a management vanity project. I strongly support their fight against this proposal, which is so damaging for them and their students. |
| Prof. Matthew Hayes | Stockholm University | University of Nottingham’s proposed compulsory redundancies in Physics and Astronomy would inflict severe long-term damage on a globally respected department, undermining teaching quality, research excellence, student recruitment, and the UK’s scientific and technological capacity. I urge the university leadership to pursue alternative financial measures instead. |
| Jon Wilden | University of Sussex | |
| Ece Uykur | Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf | |
| Kostas Skenderis | University of Southampton | |
| Prof. Eva Villaver | Institute of Astrophysics of Canary Island | |
| Prof. Ashton Bradley | University of Otago | |
| Shreedhar Rajesh | TU Darmstadt | Please don’t downsize!!! The fate in academia is in all of our hands |
| Alessandra Silvestri | Leiden University | |
| Dr Matthew Cliffe | University of Cambridge | |
| William Sharratt | University of Liverpool | |
| Sreekanth K Manikandan | Gothenburg University | Please support researchers!!!!! |
| Pablo Echevarria | Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin | |
| Steve Miller | Royal Astronomical Society/University College London | This is undermining the science base of the country, and thus our future as an innovative society. It is especially demoralising for young scientists. |
| Christian Käding | TU Wien | |
| Dr Amelia Drew | ICTP, Trieste | This is a devastating outcome for one of the leading Physics Departments in the UK and should be reconsidered. |
| Martin Kunz | University of Geneva, Switzerland | |
| Dr Carlo Tasillo | IFIC | |
| Prof. Joachim Wambsganss | Heidelberg University | |
| Dr Nigel S. Clarke FRSC | Cambridge University | |
| Dr David Thomas | University College London | Nottingham has one of the best and most respected Physics and Astronomy departments in the UK. These cuts would have a devastating and detrimental effect on the whole university. |
| Emmanuel Saridakis | National Observatory of Athens | |
| Valerio Lucarini | University of Leicester | In solidarity! |
| Prof Hazel Cox | University of Sussex (Chemistry) | Compulsory redundancies at Nottingham’s Physics and Astronomy department would be a very short-sighted decision that risks weakening a discipline central to the UK’s scientific leadership, technological innovation, and economic growth. The University of Nottingham’s Physics and Astronomy department has an excellent reputation for world-leading research and teaching, helping to train the next generation of physicists, engineers, teachers, and innovators. Physics underpins major sectors of the UK economy, including energy, advanced manufacturing, medical technology, and computing. Reducing academic capacity through compulsory redundancies risks damaging both Nottingham’s longstanding strengths and the UK’s long-term scientific and economic competitiveness. Save Nottingham Physics and Astronomy Department! |
| Eliacim Javier Velez Amador | University of Valencia | |
| Edward Binns | Imperial College London | |
| Isabel Cordero-Carrión | University of Valencia (Spain) | |
| Saba Rahimy | Swansea University | |
| Natalia Lahén | Heidelberg University | |
| David Benisty | Bar ilan University | |
| Dr. Terese Hansen | Stockholm University | |
| Luca Franci | Northumbria University | |
| Pierre Vanhove | Institut de Physique Théorique - CEA/Saclay | |
| Prof Dr Mairi Sakellariadou | King’s College London | |
| Nick E. Mavromatos | King's College London (UK) and Nat. Tech. U. Athens (Greece) | |
| Reinosuke Kusano | University of St Andrews | |
| Dr. Mehmet Süzen | Cyprus | Physics is one of the core sciences driving both the AI and quantum industrial revolutions. The Nobel Prize in Physics 2024 was awarded to AI pioneers; this was not a coincidence but rather a testament to how decades of physics research—particularly in statistical and theoretical physics—enabled today's leaps forward in artificial intelligence. We hope that Nottingham University will find an appropriate long-term funding solution to sustain its core scientific departments. Similarly, astronomy is arguably the oldest science, and advances in computing and observational astronomy continue to make it incredibly relevant in the age of AI. |
| Ignas Snellen | Leiden Observatory, Leiden University | |
| Dr. Nils Hoyer | Observatoire de Paris-Meudon | |
| Pierre Fayet | Ecole normale supérieure, Académie des sciences, Paris | |
| Dr Araf Haque | Rolls-Royce | The physics and maths department in Nottingham has played a uniquely important role in nurturing late millennial/gen-z students. I would go so far as to say that my decision to study Maths/Physics due to the great videos produced by Brady and the academics for Sixty Symbols and Numberphile. These guys should be penalised for whatever mismanagement happened at the top. |
| Martin Barstow | University of Leicester | There are many things that are wrong with the cuts implemented in Nottingham, which have been articulated very well by others. However, I would remind the institution of a couple of things. Physics recruitment has gone through cycles in the past and institutions that have reacted two hastily have had to face higher costs in building back their capability. In addition, Physics makes very important economic contributions so reducing physics activity is likely to harm the economic goals of the government. |
| Alain Blanchard | Université de Toulouse | |
| Robert Shah | Imperial College London | |
| Rachel Kane | University of Warwick | |
| Prof. Mar Bastero Gil | University of Granada | |
| Oleksiy Ivanyuk | Main Astronomical Observatory of the NAS of Ukraine | I would like to express solidarity with our British colleagues. Decades of drastic underfunding have put Ukrainian professional astronomy and astrophysics on the verge of extinction. I hope this will not happen in the UK. |
| Stefano Negro | University of York | |
| Dr Patrick Valageas | Paris-Saclay University | |
| Dr Konstantinos Konstantinou | University of Turku, Finland | |
| Romain Vasseur | University of Geneva | |
| Sarah Hughes | MIT Kavli Institute | |
| Dr. Marina Cortes | Institute for Astrophysics and Space Sciences - University of Lisbon | Nottingham Physics and Astronomy are world renowned in Physics and Astronomy and unrivalled in their expertise. Century-old structures supporting scientific enterprise are crumbling in all continents. Science itself is in great risk. Please, do tread lightly with your actions, and consider them in this context. Globally, we may be witnessing the extinction of the activity that brought our civilisation out of the Dark Ages, with Enlightenment in the XVII century: science. |
| Domenica Garzon | University of Illinois | |
| Prof. Lorenzo Sorbo | University of Massachusetts, Amherst | |
| Anja Meyer | University of Manchester | |
| Nilanthy Balakrishnan | Keele University | I am expressing my strong opposition to the decision made by the University of Nottingham's higher management team. You should not redundant the Physics/Astrophysics staff. |
| Dimitra Rigopoulou | University of Oxford | |
| Amin Aboubrahim | University of Hartford | |
| Paola Marziani | INAF - Astronomical Observatory of Padova | |
| Miguel Escudero Abenza | CERN | |
| Raj Pandya | University of Warwick | |
| Ivan Minchev | Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) | |
| Athanasios Bakopoulos | University of Patras - Greece | |
| Dr Susana Landau | University of Buenos Aires | |
| Aleksander Łukasz Lenart | Jagiellonian University | |
| Nihan Katirci | Dogus University Istanbul | |
| Dr Manosh T Manoharan | Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore | |
| Kushal Lodha | KASI | |
| Prof. Rafael Nunes | Institute of Physics - UFRGS - Brazil | |
| Miguel Zumalacarregui | Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics | |
| Daniel Kessler | University of Sheffield | |
| Christopher Harvey-Hawes | Center for Theoretical Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences | |
| Michele Pizzochero | University of Bath | |
| Prof. Francisco J. Carrera | Instituto de Fisica de Cantabria (CSIC-Universidad de Cantabria) | |
| Alexander R. H. Smith | Saint Anselm College & Dartmouth College | The School of Physics & Astronomy has excellent faculty and produces top-tier students, all of whom contribute significantly to the University of Nottingham's reputation. Moving forward with the proposed plans comprises the reputation of the University. |
| Adam Smith | University of Sheffield | |
| Tobias Marriage | Johns Hopkins University | |
| Jorge F Soriano | CUNY Lehman College | |
| Thomas Harvey | MIT | I wasn't a student at Nottingham, but the physics department there holds a very special place in my heart. Not only is it a great centre of research, including work that contributed to the development of MRI and has had an immeasurable impact on medicine worldwide, but the outreach it performs is arguably unmatched by any other UK physics department. As a teenager, I religiously watched the Sixty Symbols YouTube channel, and it was in no small part responsible for my decision to study physics and pursue an academic career. The idea that an institution so integral to my development as a physicist is now in peril is deeply alarming. I hope the planned cuts do not go ahead. |
| Dr. Barry F. Madore | Carnegie Observatories | |
| Siddharth Bhatt | Indian Institute of Science Education and Research | This myopic and self-destructive decision by the competent authorities is absolutely appalling. The School of Physics and Astronomy at Nottingham comprises some of the best minds in the country. The University is expected to fight tooth and nail for them, not against |
| Prof Thomas Schücker | Aix-Marseille University | irresponsible |
| Maria Giovanna Dainotti | National Astronomical Obs | I support the initiative to find alterative fundings to support the Cosmology program |
| Dr. K. Sravan Kumar | ICG, University of Portsmouth | |
| GENLY LEON TORRES | Universidad Católica del Norte | |
| Sam praill | UCL | |
| Deborah Sneddon | University of Sussex | |
| Sandeep Suresh Cranganore | Institute for Machine Learning, Johannes Kepler University, Linz | |
| Professor (Associate) Pantelis Apostolopoulos | Ionian University | |
| Dr Florian Niedermann | Nordita | Nottingham is one of the leading places for theoretical physics, home to researchers who have made important contributions to our understanding of Nature. These cuts are deeply unfair to them, disregard their achievements, and harm the physics community as a whole. |
| Dr Siyuan Ji | Loughborough University | Why don't we start with some voluntary, long-term executive salary cuts first? |
| Patrick PETER | Institut d'astrophysique de Paris - CNRS & Sorbonne Université | |
| Prof. Morgan Le Delliou | Lanzhou University, China | |
| Jing Li | Heidelberg University | sad to see the disappear of an astronomical department |
| Shahab Joudaki | CIEMAT | |
| Prof. Andrzej Borowiec | University of Wroclaw, Department of Physics and Astronomy | |
| Kelvin Wandia | University of Manchester | |
| Dr Akhil Kallepalli | University of Strathclyde | |
| Ticijana Ban | Institute of Physics, Zagreb, Croatia | |
| Martin S. Sloth | University of Southern Denmark | |
| Mélissa M. Azombo, FRAS, MInstP | The University of Manchester | |
| Sabrina Maniscalco | Algorithmiq Srl | |
| Prof Roy Maartens | University of the Western Cape | |
| Dr Matthew Evans | University of Cambridge | |
| Dr. Rachel Cochrane | University of Manchester | |
| Agnieszka Pollo | National Centre for Nuclear Research (Poland), Director for Science | |
| Tiago Barreiro Gonçalves | Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (Portugal) | Alumni Nottingham Physics and Astronomy |
| Prof. Abraão Capistrano | Federal University of Paraná | |
| Robert Brandenberger | McGill University | I am shocked to hear about the planned cuts. The Physics and Astronomy Department has over the past decade greatly increased its international reputation in terms of research excellence. In my field it has become one of the best in the UK! |
| John ZuHone, Astrophysicist | Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian | |
| Prof. Dragan Huterer | University of Michigan | |
| Muthusamy Rajaguru | IFT Madrid | |
| Prof. Colin Hill | Columbia University | |
| Prof Peter Schupp | CU Bremen | |
| Xan Morice-Atkinson | University of Portsmouth | Solidarity from the ICG in Portsmouth. |
| Jamie Incley | University of Manchester | |
| Dr. Thomas Steingasser | Instituto de Física Teórica UAM-CSIC | |
| Damien Thompson | University of Limerick | Calling on the UoN administration to learn from past mistakes internationally in cutting departments, to protect third level education and research, a key enabler of progress for societal good. |
| Ioannis D. Gialamas | National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics, Tallinn, Estonia | |
| Fabio Finelli | INAF OAS Bologna | |
| Isabel Newns | University of Manchester | |
| Prof. Alex Fink | Queen Mary University of London | |
| Eduardo Guendelman | Ben Gurion University of the Negev | |
| Nathan Welch | Tokamak Energy | A first class department shouldn't suffer due to poor mismanagement at the most senior levels |
| Prof Danièle Steer | Laboratoire de Physique de l'École Normale Supérieure | This department is one of the best in the world. Period. Stunningly stupid decision, hopefully it can be reversed (which might require some administrators to think long-term...) |
| Julian Sonner | University of Geneva | Nottingham is recognised worldwide for having a first-rate physics department. The proposed cuts sound devastating, and will have an extremely detrimental impact, far beyond the immediate and obvious one to those staff members who risk losing their jobs due to absolutely no fault of their own. These cuts will put at risk the entire future viability of an internationally visible research and teaching centre of the highest quality. |
| Timothy Clifton | QMUL | The physics department at Nottingham has attracted some of the best researchers and science communicators in the world, and it would be an extraordinary act of self-harm for the university to enforce the proposed compulsory redundancies on this highly successful and talented group. I sincerely hope this will be re-considered, and that the university will instead support the talent that it has in this department. |
| Alexander Reeves | ETH Zürich/ University of Oxford | |
| Andrea Rubiola | Università degli Studi di Torino | PhD in cosmology |
| Dr. Caroline Bertemes | Heidelberg University | |
| Dr. Suvendu Giri | Uppsala University, Sweden | |
| Dr. Goutam Manna | Prabhat Kumar College Contai | |
| Zach Adam Larsen | UC Berkeley | |
| Prof Suzanne Aigrain | University of Oxford | |
| Margo J Taylor | Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto, Canada | An amazingly strong department that has led the world. I do hope cuts are minimal and do not impact the incredible science. |
| Dr. Laurence Tresse | Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille | |
| Ida Janiak | The University of Manchester | |
| Shubho R. Roy | Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad | Downsizing Physics and Astronomy staff is a suicidal move on the part of the University. Worldwide, Physics and Astronomy graduates are highly sought after as they are apex problem-solvers, thanks to the multitude of skills they acquire and strategies they imbibe owing to the rigorous, methodical, analytical, computational and innovation-driven training imparted in Physics and Astronomy courses. Even more so, Physics and Astronomy Faculty are foremost in imparting the kind of education/instruction necessary for an AI-ready work force. |
| Prof. David L Wiltshire | University of Canterbury | |
| Florian Millo | Sorbonne University | |
| Biagio Lucini | Queen Mary University of London | Nottingham Physics has internationally renowned scientists. Any compulsory redundancy would be seen as an obious sign of extremely bad management, which will damage the reputation of the University and result in lower intenational ranking. This will affect student recruitment, creating a downward spiral from which it would be very difficult to come out. |
| Harkan Kirk-Karakaya | University of York | |
| Jean-Philippe Uzan | CNRS/Institut d'astrophysique de Paris | |
| Michael Poole | Siemens Healthineers, Magnet Technology Ltd | Unthinkable cuts proposed to such an impactful department teaching critical skills for the UK economy and producing undoubtably world class research output. |
| Jacob Turnbull | University of Oxford | I did my undergraduate and masters at the Physics departments at Nottingham. The staff there supported me throughout and ultimately shaped the career that I am pursuing now. I wholeheartedly believe that without their support, I wouldn’t have been good enough to do a PHD. The threat from the university of cutting such a large part of the school is frankly disgusting. The financial situation that the university finds itself in was avoidable and those that caused it haven’t been held accountable and are instead enjoying the next 6 figure salary elsewhere. The former vice-chancellor, as well as all of those involved in the decision to buy the new campus buildings, as well as waste millions on consultants and contractors who were paid to simply pay themselves on the back is abhorrent. The staff who work themselves to the bone in the department of physics and elsewhere deserve better |
| Alexander Zhuk | Deutsches Zentrum für Astrophysik and Center for Advanced Systems Understanding | I am resolutely opposed to the reduction of university faculty and support staff, and I express my full support for the Particle Cosmology and Astronomy groups involved. |
| William Giare | University of Hawaii at Manoa | |
| Chris Davies | University of Leeds | |
| Prof Sarah Brough | University of New South Wales | Western countries are decreasing in productivity and are desperate for numerically literate problem solvers to resolve this issue. Physics & astronomy graduates are key to solving this conundrum and so are highly sought after for a wide range of careers. So this seems a very short sighted decision. The Physics & Astronomy department in Nottingham is also excellent in Astronomy research (the area I know best) and it would be a devastating loss to many international projects to lose these people. |
| Prof. Masahiro Hotta | Tohoku University | |
| Prof. dr. Vladas Vansevicius | Center for Physical Sciences and Technology | |
| Keith Grainge | University of Manchester | |
| Dr Hannah Dalgleish | University of Southampton | |
| Daniel Panizo | Kyoto University | |
| Dr Jesse van de Sande | University of New South Wales | |
| Luisa Lucie-Smith | University of Hamburg | |
| Dr Nils A. Nilsson | Institute for Basic Science | |
| Dr Chandra Shekhar Saraf | Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute | |
| Dr Niels Warburton | University College Dublin | |
| Eve Dones | Institute for Basic Science CTPU-CGA | |
| Prof. Karl Glazebrook FAA | Swinburne University of Technology | Nottingham Physics & Astronomy is internationally a top department doing leading research in early galaxies and galaxy dynamics and many other topics. Such a large cuts would gut core research performance of the University |
| Ricardo Ogando | CTI Renato Archer | Nottingham is a reference in the field and there is a reason for that: people. |
| Prof. S. Shankaranarayanan | IIT Bombay | I was a Postdoctoral fellow at ICG, Portsmouth. I know the kind of work done in UK. I think, such high-end research will be affected permanently for generations to come. |
| Nils Hertl | Department of Chemistry, University of Warwick | |
| Alexey Bobrick | Monash University | Cutting science is a sure way to more flat-Earth-like theories and all that comes with it |
| S. Mahesh Chandran | Seoul National University | |
| Sebastian Trojanowski | National Centre for Nuclear Research (Poland) & Astrocent, NCAC PAS | |
| Sunny Vagnozzi | University of Trento | Don't do it! You really really really don't want to end up like other countries (*cough* USA *cough*) and plus there are sustainable alternatives (read the 50 pages document). For instance, remove unnecessary managerial layers and reduce associated overhead costs, there's so much waste at the moment. If you do this, it will be non-reversibile and you will see dire consequences many years from now. Or do it, and the rest of Europe will reap the benefits. It's your call. |
| Patrik Svancara | Institut Néel, CNRS, France | As a former postdoc at Nottingham, I had the privilege to witness first-hand the excellence and passion of the academic staff at the School. Moving forward with Future Nottingham would be a disaster! |
| Dr David Parkinson | Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute | |
| Prof. Klaas Wynne | University of Glasgow | |
| Vincent Vennin | Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris, CNRS | |
| Sean Benevedes | MIT | |
| Willem Elbers | Durham University | |
| Prof Amanda Weltman | University of Cape Town | This is a regressive action that will eviscerate one of the strongest physics departments in the UK. The arc of history will not look kindly on the destruction of the knowledge economy that is the engine of societal progress. It is clear that alternatives exist and that the actions that led to this situation requires an entire change in management approach. Sending support to those most affected. You deserve better. |
| Lucía Fonseca de la bella | University of Surrey | |
| Diane Feuillet | Uppsala University | |
| Prof Cora Uhlemann | Bielefeld University & Newcastle University | The proposal is shocking, threatening to erode both Nottingham University‘s standing and the strength of Physics and Astronomy throughout the whole of the UK. |
| Ruth Durrer | Geneva University | |
| Robert Mostoghiu Paun | Swinburne University of Technology | |
| Andrew Hopkins, Professor of Astronomy | Macquarie University | Nottingham should look to Australian universities where similar scales of cuts have been proposed in just the past few years, then badly bungled in implementation, and subsequently reversed in order to manage university core business. And all at a massive negative reputation cost, with hugely negative publicity nationally and internationally, not to mention the lasting impact on staff morale. There are more cost-effective solutions for budget deficits (if the deficits are even real) than massive staff cuts. |
| Simon Weng | Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille | |
| Luca Amendola | Heidelberg University | |
| A/Prof Duane Hamacher | University of Melbourne | Unfathomable. |
| A/Prof. Michelle Cluver | Swinburne University of Technology | |
| Chunliang Mu | Macquarie University | |
| Brayden Leicester | Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology | |
| Maximilien Cloesen | Monash University | |
| Katarzyna Sławińska | Theoretical Physics institute, Jagiellonian University | |
| Prof. Alexander Knebe | Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain | This is deeply concerning and difficult to comprehend in its lack of foresight. The proposed cuts would amount to an unprecedented and short-sighted erosion of academic capital in a field that is fundamental to both technological progress and societal development. Reducing staff capacity on this scale would cause lasting damage to a world-class department, seriously undermining both its global reputation and its ability to provide high-quality education. |
| Dr Kathryn Ross | AusSRC - Curtin University | |
| Prof Amanda Karakas | Monash University | |
| Dr. Mindaugas Karciauskas | Center for Physical Sciences and Technology (FTMC) | |
| Prof. Camille Bonvin | University of Geneva | |
| Marco Monaci | Swinburne University of Technology | Considering that astronomy and astrophysics have a remarkable spinoff rate for future technologies, cutting in this way is certainly not a far-sighted decision. |
| Albany Asher | Western Sydney University / CSIRO Space and Astronomy | |
| Dr. Thorsten (Thor) Tepper-García | The University of Sydney | I stand in solidarity with my colleagues from Nottingham |
| Prof. Dominique Aubert | University of Strasbourg | |
| Barry Wardell | University College Dublin | |
| Dr Deaglan Bartlett | University of Oxford | |
| Thibault Guillemin | LAPP-CNRS | |
| Vasiliki Karanasou | University of Tartu | |
| Prof Dr Harald E. Möller | Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany | For more than six decades, the Department of Physics and Astronomy has been a world leader in NMR and MRI research, and this remains true today. This is evident not only in Sir Peter Mansfield’s Nobel Prize, but also in numerous groundbreaking contributions across the entire field of magnetic resonance. It is completely baffling why this is being called into question. |
| Prof Alejo Nevado-Holgado | University of Oxford | |
| Jordan Koechler | INFN Turin | |
| Antonio Quintana Estellés | Instituto de Física Fundamental (IFF CSIC, Madrid) | |
| Dr. Florian Pacaud | University of Bonn | |
| Chiara Caprini | CERN and University of Geneva | |
| Francesca Calore | CNRS Laboratory of Annecy of Theoretical Physics | |
| Samuel Brieden | TTK, RWTH Aachen, Germany | |
| Carmen Sánchez Contreras | Centro de Astrobiologia (CAB), CSIC-INTA | |
| Beth McCarthy Gould | Newcastle University | The Physics & Astronomy department at Nottingham is a huge part of the UK astronomy, cosmology and astrophysics communities, and these appalling cuts would damage not only this standing but derail the lives and careers of many excellent researchers. Full solidarity. |
| Louis Manchon | Observatoire de Paris | |
| Jun.-Prof. Dr. Christopher J. Riseley | Astronomisches Institut der Ruhr-Universität Bochum | The news that the Nottingham University School of Physics and Astronomy is facing such brutal treatment is atrocious. The department is respected across the world for leading roles in many fields, in particular early-Universe cosmology, and is packed with outstanding staff who conduct truly first-rate research and teaching. At a time when the UK Higher Education sector direly needs to hold onto such treasures, this decision seems woefully misguided and short-sighted, and these cuts cannot be carried through to conclusion. |
| Roland Triay | Aix-Marseille University | |
| Prof. Julien Lesgourgues | RWTH Aachen university | |
| Cédric DEFFAYET | CNRS Director of Research, ENS Paris | |
| Prof David Bacon | University of Portsmouth | The University of Nottingham's School of Physics and Astronomy is outstanding, and has been a great source of inspiration and first class research for decades. I strongly urge the University to reconsider their current course of action. |
| Alon Faraggi | University of Liverpool | The School of Physics and Astronomy, a leading international research centre in particle physics and gravity. Home of Professor Sir Peter Mansfield Nobel Laureate 2003, credited for his contributions to the development of Magnetic Resonance Imaging that saves lives every day around the world. Evidently, a national treasure. Must be saved. |
| Thomas Colas | University of Cambridge | |
| Tanguy DUSSERRE | IAS - Université Paris-Saclay | |
| Xavier Garrido | Université Paris-Saclay | |
| Dr. D. Fabbian | UniVie and UAS TW (Austria) | I express my support to affected (astro-)physics colleagues. This is a recipe for disaster and has an extremely high chance of provoking a snowball effect, i.e. of stopping most research funding flow and any forward-looking, innovative plans and projects for the future generation of scientists in all fields at your university. Those at Nottingham Uni who currently have decision power in this matter, must urgently reconsider prioritising medium- and long-term strategic thinking and planning, rather than following through with such short-sighted, misguided short-term advice by some bean-counting, ill-informed consultants and managers. The latter should clearly rather be axed themselves instead, when advising that the best solution is to drastically and suddenly cut staff at all levels of the School of Physics and Astronomy. Reversing the current approach and adopting a rational vision for this School's future is what will ensure that the university keeps attracting brilliant people and minds, and thus maintains its strength, leadership, visibility, innovation capabilities, future preparedness, and economic sustainability. |
| Simone D'Onofrio | ICE - CSIC | |
| Assoc. Prof. Andreas Nunnenkamp | University of Vienna | |
| Lorenzo Baldazzi | Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata | |
| Dr. Claudio Dalla Vecchia | Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias | |
| Muskaan Monteiro | Monash University | |
| Benjamin Racine | CNRS | |
| Pascal Démoulin | Paris Observatory | |
| Héctor Estellés Estrella | Institute of Space Sciences - CSIC | I strongly support the Nottingham Astronomy Group and oppose these proposed cuts. The proposed cuts to the Nottingham Astronomy Group are deeply concerning. Groups like this play a crucial role in advancing astrophysics research, fostering international collaborations, and mentoring young scientists. The loss would extend far beyond Nottingham itself and would negatively impact the wider astronomy and gravitational-wave community. |
| Neven Bilic | Rudjer Boskovic Institute | A very strong support from me! |
| Alberto Roper Pol | University of Geneva | |
| Adrian Szpilfidel | Observatoire de Paris | |
| Benjamin Leather | University of Southampton | |
| Gonzalo J. Olmo | Universitat de València | |
| Dr. Piyush Sharda | Leiden University | |
| Prof. Ben Stappers | University of Manchester | |
| Mathieu Langer | Observatoire de Paris - PSL | |
| Timothy Burns | Swansea University | |
| Jackson Levi Said | University of Malta | |
| Dr. Anna Porredon | CIEMAT | |
| Ingrid Pelisoli | University of Warwick | |
| Javier Gorgas | Universidad Complutense de Madrid | |
| Thomas Krauss | University of York | |
| Dr. Michel De Cian | University of Manchester | |
| Samantha Youles | University of Portsmoputh | |
| Ignasi Pérez-Ràfols | Universtitat Politècnica de Catalunya | |
| Jesús Torrado | Institute for the Structure of Matter (IEM-CSIC) | |
| Adi Armoni | Swansea University | |
| Pietro Ghedini | IFIC, CSIC - UV | |
| Laurence Wilson | University of York | |
| Igor de Oliveira Cardoso Pedreira | Universidade Federal Fluminense | |
| Sylvain de la Torre | Aix-Marseille Université | |
| Prof Robert Crain | Liverpool John Moores University | I call upon the governors of the University of Nottingham to review the actions taken by the institution's senior management, and to step in to correct an unthinkably misguided decision. |
| Prof Jack Wells | University College London | |
| Matteo Figini | University College London | |
| Anna Combes | University College London | |
| Karin Kjellgren | University of Heidelberg | |
| Oliver Josephs | University College London | Magnificent medical physics / MRI research is done in Nottingham. |
| Dr. Llibert Aresté Saló | KU Leuven | |
| Professor Jen Gupta | Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth | |
| Dr Bhavana Solanky | University College London | The MRI group at UoN are world leaders in this field, to let any of these world leading academics go (many of which pull in large amounts of funding) would be at the long term detriment of the department and university as a whole. |
| Dr Barbara Dymerska | University College London | Making these job cuts risks triggering a cascading decline in both research and teaching quality, with effects that can quickly compound across the institution—ultimately worsening, rather than improving, its financial position. |
| Amy Bonsor | University of Cambridge | |
| A/Prof Natasha Hurley-Walker | Curtin University | |
| Jakob Neef | University College Dublin | |
| Miguel de Loreto Neto | Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas da Universidade de São Paulo (IAG/USP) | |
| Dr Yue Wang | University of York | The proposed redundancies represent a catastrophic failure of leadership. The fallout of this decision will echo for decades, crippling the university’s research capabilities, compromising the education of future generations, and tearing away the security of dedicated families, especially those just setting up their life in Nottingham... |
| Edward Daw | The University of Sheffield | Such a shame, and a false saving. Once you start cutting staff, delivery of teaching will consume those remaining, they will then start to fail as researchers, and the department/University will lose income. It's a positive feedback loop, ending in a very bad outcome for the University. Short sighted and lacking any sort of vision. Reconsider. |
| David Alonso | University of Oxford | |
| Dr Timmy Delage | Imperial College London | A university’s attractiveness largely depends on the quality and impact of the research conducted by its academic and research staff. Making these staff members redundant would be counterproductive and should not even be considered. |
| Nils Schöneberg | Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich) | The university of Nottingham has a cosmology branch that is internationally recognized in their research output, especially in the area of early universe and quantum gravity and gravitational wave physics. I fear that this excellence might be lost both from tangible perspectives (staff moving away) and intangible perspectives (an environment of distrust and damaged reputation being created). Beyond this purely scientific argument, however, and perhaps more importantly, a drastic cut in funding is also a fiscally not a great idea, as outlined in the UCU report. As such, there is no good reason to not use natural atrophy as a mechanism to reduce the workforce. Of course this broadens the time horizon of staff reduction but saves the university a lot of headaches in the short- and long-term. |
| Dr Samuel Ward | Center for Computational Astrophysics | |
| Prof. Michele Cappellari | University of Oxford | |
| Eugene Avrutin | University of York | |
| Dr Alyssa Drake | University of Hertfordshire | |
| Dr. Ivan J. Vera Marun | University of Manchester | |
| Prof Evan Keane | Trinity College Dublin | |
| James Stubbing | University of Sussex | |
| José Luis Bernal | Instituto de Física de Cantabria | |
| César Caballero - Gaudes | Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language | The School of Physics and Astronomy is a highly prestigious department across multiple scientific fields. As a previous PhD student of the University of Nottingham and having strong collaborations with several members of the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Center, who are affected by this reduction, I cannot be in more disagreement with this policy which will undoubtedly result in a substantial decrease in the quality of teaching and research outcomes produced at the University of Nottingham, lowering its reputation as a world-class academic and research institution. |
| Richard F L Evans | University of York | |
| Michele Cantiello | INAF Astr. Obs. of Abruzzo | |
| Nicola Tamanini | Laboratoire des deux infinis - Toulouse (L2IT/CNRS) | |
| Huub Rottgering | Leiden Observatory | Very much hope that this excellent and productive department can continue. |
| Dr John Stott | Lancaster University | |
| Dr. Chad Briddon | Vienna University of Technology | |
| Tessa Baker | ICG, University of Portsmouth | I am shocked and saddened to hear of this threat to the job security of colleagues at U.Nottingham Physics and Astronomy. The group has the highest standard of international research excellence, and a reputation which matches this. It is unthinkable that a UEB would undermine such an outstanding group with compulsory redundancies. Sending my fullest support to Nottingham colleagues. |
| Dr Martin Bucher | Directeur de recherche, Centre national de recherche scientifique (CNRS), Paris, France | |
| Professor Ivette Fuentes Guridi | University of Southampton | |
| Filippo Vernizzi | IPhT CEA/Saclay | |
| Licia Verde | ICCUB | This is how it looks like: penalising teaching and research (which are excellent) for poor decisions of management. |
| Tomas Hough | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) | |
| Ema Dimastrogiovanni | University of Groningen | |
| Ricardo P. Schiavon | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Dr. Sara Santoni | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid | |
| Syksy Räsänen | University of Helsinki | |
| Samira Abdelhamid | University of Oxford | research will never progress if we keep cutting out resources in the shape of staff, saving money comes after progress not cutting corners. |
| Leah Morabito | Durham University | |
| Jonathan Whittle | Swansea University | |
| Dr Paul Wilkinson | British Geological Survey | |
| Luis Escamilla | Istanbul Technical University | |
| Vivian Poulin | CNRS | |
| Prof. Danny Steeghs | University of Warwick | |
| Miguel Montargès | LIRA / Observatoire de Paris - PSL | |
| Dr Demie Kepaptsoglou | University of York | |
| Álvaro Cendal | Universidad Complutense de Madrid | |
| Vareilles | Centre de Physique Théorique, Marseille | |
| Pierre Auclair | Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris - CNRS | |
| Giovanni Maria Strampelli | Institute for Astronomy | |
| Dr Trevor Almeida | University of Glasgow | |
| Lucas Pinol | CNRS, LPENS | |
| Prof Matt Probert | University of York | External Examiner for Physics at the University of Nottingham |
| Marcello Giroletti | INAF-IRA | |
| Saitej Amonkar | Max Planck Institute for Astronomy | |
| Julio Arrechea | International School for Advanced Studies | |
| Dr Allan Ernest | Charles Sturt University, Australia | I support this cause. |
| Matthew Grech-Sollars | UCL | |
| Dr. Alice Somigliana | Max Planck Institute for Astronomy | |
| Dr. Sarah Skoff | TU Wien | |
| Aki Tsuruta | Finnish Meteorological Institute | |
| Dan Naylor | Lancaster University | |
| Philipp Neckam | Vienna University of Technology | |
| Professor Lesley Cohen | Imperial College | This is a shocking state of affairs for a highly reputable Physics Department to find itself in. |
| Helmut Hoerner | TU Wien | |
| Marco Souza de Joode | Max Planck Institute for Astronomy; Heidelberg University | |
| Giulio Fabbian | Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale, CNRS/Université Paris Saclay | |
| Dr Dwayne Isaac Patrick Laurence Spiteri | Deutsches Elektronen Synchron (DESY) | |
| Dr Matt Kenzie | University of Cambridge | |
| James Lequeux | Emeritus astronomer, Paris Observatory | |
| Dr. James Mullaney | The University of Sheffield | As a former undergraduate of Nottingham Physics, I am particularly saddened by the proposed cuts. My education at Nottingham was first rate, with me and many of my peers having gone on to successful careers, whether using our Physics background directly or not. The proposed cuts are incredibly short-sighted, and will leave Nottingham University in a far weaker state. I desperately hope the university management seriously consider the other options on the table. |
| Floris van der Tak | SRON / U Groningen | |
| Lennart Balkenhol | Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris | |
| Prof. David O'Regan | Trinity College Dublin | |
| Alessandro D.A.M. Spallicci di Filottrano | Université d'Orléans, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Centre National d'Études Spatiales au Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de l'Environnement et e de l'Espace | Stop destroying the know-how for your future generations in favour of the short term interests of policy makers. |
| Barbara Šoda | University of Zagreb | |
| Prof Chris Clark | University College London | The technologies and developments from the Physics and Astronomy department at the University of Nottingham are vitally important to the UK economy. Science is one of the few things we do well in this country. Protect it! Don't end up looking back in 10 years time and say "I wish we hadn't done that". |
| Nicolai Friis | TU Wien | |
| Daniel Lyon | Swinburne University of Technology | |
| Professor Mohamed Babiker | University of York | |
| Prof Denis PUY | Laboratory Universe and Particles of University of Montpellier, France | |
| Dr. Alexander Venner | Max Planck Institute for Astronomy | |
| George McKay | University of Warwick | |
| Benjamin Floyd | University of Portsmouth | Nottingham has been a global leader in astrophysics, especially in galaxy evolution. To lose so many key academics would be devastating to not just Nottingham but astrophysics all over the world. |
| Anna Durrant | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Helena-Margaret Grabham | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Jonah T Conley | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Prof.. Alexander Balanov | Loughborough University | |
| Charles Attwood Thomas | QMUL | |
| Dr. Laur Järv | University of Tartu | |
| Silvia Bergamini | The Open University | |
| Alessandro Lupi | University of Insubria (Italy) | |
| Ruchika Ruchika | University of Salamanca | |
| Professor Davinia Fernandez-Espejo | University of Birmingham | |
| Christian G Boehmer | University College London (UCL) | Nottingham Physics and Astronomy has an excellent international reputation. I have very highly cited work published with colleagues from Nottingham. One of my previous PhD students, and one of my current PhD students did their first degrees there and I am very impressed with them. I am sure there are less profitable units than P&A at Nottingham University where the axe could fall. |
| Tajron Jurić | Ruđer Bošković Institute | |
| Keith McKenna | University of York | |
| Prof Ulrich Kolb | The Open University | |
| Dr Waleed El Hanafy | The British University in Egypt | |
| Tom Sedgwick | University of Hertfordshire | The proposed cuts at the University of Nottingham would be yet another serious blow to UK physics and astronomy. Nottingham's School of Physics and Astronomy is internationally recognised for the quality of its research and teaching, with significant contributions across galaxy evolution, cosmology, and major instrumentation efforts such as WEAVE. Losing a third of its staff would not only devastate careers and disrupt the education of current and prospective students, it would also damage the UK's scientific standing and the wider international collaborations that depend on this expertise. I urge the university leadership to reconsider these proposals and to engage genuinely with staff on a sustainable alternative. |
| Jean Schneider | Observatoire de Paris | Research is at the heart of human progress. These post suppressions would be a regression |
| Dr Jonathan Henshaw | Max Planck Institute for Astronomy | |
| Claudia Wheeler-Kingshott | UCL | The world needs physics!! |
| Miguel Santander-García | Observatorio Astronómico Nacional (IGN) | |
| Dr Alex Jenkins | University of Cambridge | |
| Dr Freeke van de Voort | Cardiff University | |
| Dr Amy Gillespie | University of Oxford | |
| Søren Larsen | Radboud University, Nijmegen | |
| Florence Durret | Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris | |
| Eline Tolstoy | Kapteyn Institute, University of Groningen | |
| Mario Pitschmann | TU Wien | |
| Christopher Lovell | University of Cambridge | |
| Dr Marika Asgari | Newcastle University | Solidarity to Nottingham colleagues. Don't give up on the fight against redundancies caused by a broken system. We (the students and staff) are the University. |
| Daniel Price | Monash University | Nottingham has an international reputation for excellence in Astronomy, so much is lost with cuts of this scale that would take 30 years to rebuild |
| Prof Michele Trenti | School of Physics, The University of Melbourne | |
| Navonil Saha | Astronomisches Rechen-Institut , Universität Heidelberg | |
| Roland Kroeger | University of York | |
| Dario Bettoni | León University | |
| David Fairhurst | The University of Edinburgh | |
| Khang Minh Nguyen | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Prof Simon Ellis | Macquarie University | |
| Elisa Fazzari | Sapienza University of Rome | |
| Chiara De Leo | Sapienza University | |
| Rogemar André Riffel | Federal University of Santa Maria | |
| Philip Lucas | University of Hertfordshire | |
| Sofía A. Cora | Institute of Astrophysics of La Plata | |
| Enrico Specogna | University of Sheffield | |
| Dr Rhaana Starling | University of Leicester | |
| Drew Jamieson | Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics | |
| Rebecca McClelland | University of Cambridge | |
| Arsen Levitskiy | Swinburne University of Technology | |
| Michael O'Connor | Astrophysics Research Institute, Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Silke Weinfurtner | University of Manchester | I sign this letter as a former member of the University of Nottingham. I dedicated thirteen years to the University, and the environment the School provided allowed me to grow scientifically — securing prestigious research fellowships, including the URF and the Leverhulme Research Leaders Fellowship, and leading a national program on Quantum Technologies for Fundamental Physics. I left with a heavy heart, but with growing concern about a fundamental disconnect between the University's leadership and its staff — a leadership that appears to neither understand nor value the people who make the institution what it is. This disconnect is reflected in decisions of this magnitude being made without meaningful consultation, and culminated in a vote of no confidence in the Vice-Chancellor, who has since suggested in public forums that staff accept below-market salaries because they lack the ambition to seek better-paid work elsewhere. The consequences of these cuts are not merely organizational: the proposed removal of key technical staff and APM Health & Safety Officers is deeply worrying. Sophisticated experimental facilities — including those at the forefront of Quantum Technologies and Materials Science — cannot be operated safely without this expertise. I urge the University Council to pause this process and engage seriously with the University of Nottingham's most valuable asset: its own staff. |
| Prof. COURTOIS Helene | University Lyon 1, France | Don’t cut the staff shaping the future of the planet and its youth — Physics and Astronomy. Cut the positions of those responsible for the university’s poor management instead. |
| Dr. Stéphane Lavignac | Université Paris-Saclay | |
| Alain Riazuelo | Institut d'astrophysique de Paris | |
| Elena Terlevich | INAOE, Puebla, Mexico | |
| Franca De Domenico-Langer | Heidelberg University | |
| Tuomo Tikkanen | University of Leicester | |
| Charles Gammie | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | |
| Violeta Gonzalez-Perez | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid | Fundamental research is needed for societies to advance |
| Dr Kyle Oman | Durham University | Nottingham astrophysics is internationally recognised and produces excellent research disproportionately to the size of the group. In the current climate most academics leaving Nottingham are unlikely to be able to find new employment in their field domestically, so this will be a loss not just to the university but to UK astrophysics as a whole. |
| Liana Li | Institute of astronomy, geophysics and atmosferic sciences of University of São Paulo | |
| Dr. Laura Herold | Johns Hopkins University | |
| Matteo Bonetti | University of Milano-Bicocca | |
| Matteo Porru | INAF - Astronomical Observatory of Trieste | |
| Laura Uronen | The Chinese University of Hong Kong | |
| Dr. Mara Attia | University of Groningen | |
| A/Prof Nick Tothill | Western Sydney University | The University of Nottingham is one of the strongest universities in the UK, and its Physics department is world-class. Decisions like this will not only deter students from studying Physics at Nottingham, but also other STEM degrees. |
| Maurogordato Sophie | Laboratoire Lagrange, UniCA, OCA, CNRS | |
| Francesco Brandoli | Institute of Space Sciences - CSIC | |
| Volodymyr Kruglyak | University of Exeter | |
| Santiago Esteban Perez Bergliaffa | University of the State of Rio de Janeiro | |
| Manfried FABER | Techn. Univ. Wien, Atominstitut | |
| Dr. Katey Alatalo | Space Telescope Science Institute | |
| Prof. Neelima Sehgal | Stony Brook University | |
| Prof. Paul Ricker | University of Illinois | Foolish and short-sighted. |
| Aurelien Hees | CNRS - Paris Observatory | |
| Daniele Bertacca | Padua University, Italy | |
| Iason Sofos | The University of Leeds | |
| Ashu Kushwaha | Institute of Science Tokyo, Japan | |
| Dr Rahul Rana | Chalmers University of Technology | |
| Prof Adam Pound | University of Southampton | |
| Leo Stein | University of Mississippi | |
| Peter Boorman | Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics | |
| Cassandra Lochhaas | Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian | |
| Philipe Zarka | Observatoire de Paris - CNRS | We need science. |
| Alessio Celi | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain | |
| Patrick Canu | CNRS-Ecole Polytechnique-Sorbonne-Universite | |
| Graeme Candlish | Universidad de Valparaiso, Chile | |
| Marie Cassing | Goethe University Frankfurt | I support this petition. Cuts should not be made on science or education. |
| Dante Paz | CONICET Argentina | |
| Asta Heinesen | Queen Mary University of London | |
| Kral Quentin | Paris Observatory | |
| Dr Tim Pearce | Warwick | |
| Melissa Hobson | Université Grenoble-Alpes | |
| Mariana Jaber | National Centre for Nuclear Research | |
| Professor Clifford V. Johnson | University of California, Santa Barbara | This is a terrible mistake. Indeed it is an act of irreversible deeply damaging vandalism. Please reconsider. |
| Jean-Mathias Griessmeier | CNRS Orléans | |
| Giovanni Montani | ENEA | |
| Alice Vinhote | Universidade de São Paulo | |
| Francesco Piacentini | Sapienza University of Rome | |
| Prof Sebastian Gurovich | IATE-OAC-UNC | Solidarity from an Argentine astronomer who watched the same wave hit CONICET last year. These cuts are not inevitable and the alternative proposals deserve serious consideration. |
| Ares Osborn | University of Warwick | |
| Arif Solmaz | Istanbul Health and Technology University | |
| Andreas Schindewolf, PhD | TU Wien | |
| William Brilliant | University of Cambridge | |
| Farzana Meru | University of Warwick | |
| Dr Alexander James Mustill | Lund University, Sweden | |
| Dr Ross Church | Lund University | |
| Dr. Tom Bakx | Chalmers University of Technology | |
| Cecilia Quiñones - Former telescope operator | Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba - Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Córdoba, Argentina) | |
| Dr Heather Cegla | University of Warwick | |
| Martín de los Rios | CONICET | |
| Gabriel Oio | Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba | My deepest sympathies go out to all the workers at the University of Nottingham. I hope the administration will reconsider before destroying such a prestigious institution. |
| Roger Ferlet | Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris | |
| Julien Lavalle | CNRS, LUPM, Montpellier-France | Horrifying. From outside the UK, it is shocking to see a first-rate research group - praised for its international recognition and leading influence in multiple fields - facing the threat of quasi disappearance; cynically degraded as a mere economic variable, subject to adjustment; regardless of any scientific value or any role in advancing and disseminating physical sciences. This is an affront to common sense and to the very mission of a university: to contribute the best possible research, to educate, shape, and feed with top-level research the current and future generations of students, who are the pillars of a modern society. Fundamental research underpins most technological, societal, and industrial progress. Cutting it off is akin to severing one’s own head. |
| Isabel Rebollido Vázquez | Centro de Astrobiología (CAB CSIC-INTA) | |
| Sandra Jaison | UFRGS, Brazil | |
| Jean Gomes | DTx CoLAB | |
| Francisco Javier Castander | Institute of Space Sciences (ICE-CSIC) | |
| Nelson Padilla | Instituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental (CONICET - Argentina) | Nottingham has been part of international networks for decades, with long-standing exchanges and collaborations with Latin America, including IATE. We stand in solidarity with our colleagues and hope alternatives can be found to protect staff and research. |
| Prof Paul Soler | University of Glasgow | This is a very short-sighted and erroneous course of action. Cuts of this magnitude will impact the reputation of the university and will reduce teaching quality, which will impact the willingness of students wanting to study at Nottingham, despite being a Russel Group University. The lower student intake will result in reduced income, so it will be a downward spiral which will be very difficult to stop. The world-class research by staff made redundant and the reduced critical mass will curtail the ability to seek new research grants, which will also reduce another successful income stream. While Senior management at the University may assume that they will be saving costs, it is very likely that it will backfire on them and significantly reduce income as well. So, a problem of their own making will be made worse by their own short-sighted decisions. Surely there are better ways to reduce costs. |
| Dr Óscar Jiménez-Arranz | Lund University | |
| Timothy Cohen | CERN/University of Oregon | |
| Sara Lucatello | INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova | |
| Dr Szilárd Csizmadia | DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt) | |
| Toby Rodel | Queen's University Belfast | I'm now completing my PhD in Astrophysics at Queen's University Belfast but before that I grew up and went to secondary school in Nottingham. Outreach from the Physics and Astronomy group at Nottingham, notably its sixty symbols video series and school trips to the campus undoubtedly affected my decision to pursue astrophysics later in life. Without a world class research institute on my doorstep, my opportunities to engage in Physics at a state school in Nottingham would certainly be greatly diminished and I may not have become the researcher I am today. Don't rob the next generation of those opportunities. |
| Matilde Fernandez | Institut of Astrophysics of Andalucia - CSIC (Spain) | From my own experience as former director of the Institut of Astrophysics of Andalucia - CSIC (Spain), cuts like those proposed here will severely affect both students and researchers, rapidly destroying what has required decades to achieve. It is essential to consider other alternatives. |
| Nataliia Bazhan | Technical University Wien | |
| Eduardo Salgado | University of Coimbra | |
| Nicolas Loayza Romero | CEICO-FZU | |
| Pierre-Alain Duc | Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg | |
| Amrita Banerjee | Swinburne University of Technology | I’m signing to stand with Nottingham’s Astrophysics Department. I completely oppose cutting faculty and staff.Please protect Nottingham. |
| Malcolm Jardine | University of Barcelona | |
| Dr. Harry C. Sample | University of Southampton | |
| Dr. Labani Mallick | The Mallick Space Research Center (Founding Director) | |
| Antara Basu-Zych | UMBC/NASA GSFC | |
| Ariel Zandivarez | IATE (CONICET-UNC) - Observatorio Astronomico de Córdoba (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba), Argentina. | |
| Dr. Louis Quilley | University of Manchester | |
| Molly Peeples | Space Telescope Science Institute / Johns Hopkins University | |
| Rafa Fuster Rico | Universidad Complutense de Madrid | |
| Dr. Daniele Sorini | Durham University | |
| Lauri Pänkäläinen | University of Helsinki | Cuts of this magnitude are simply not acceptable and would make work unbearable even for those who get to keep their positions. The alternatives must be heard and considered. |
| Samuel Upton | University of Southampton | |
| Andrei Cuceu | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory | |
| Martin Turbet | CNRS | |
| Prof. François Levrier | Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris | |
| Prof. Jimena Gorfinkiel | The Open University | |
| Prof Tim R Morris | University of Southampton | |
| Nathan Steinle | University of Manitoba | |
| Joseph Martyn | Trinity College Dublin | |
| Dr James Kent | University of Oxford | |
| Dr. Genevieve Parmentier | Heidelberg University | |
| Prof. Gijs Nelemans | Radboud University | Such cuts will be very hard to repair and in the future be regretted |
| Magnus Bertilsson | University of Jyväskylä | |
| Andrés Nicolás Ruiz | Insituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental & Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba - Córdoba, Argentina | |
| Natalia Perkins | University of Minnesota | It will be a big mistake to close the School of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Nottingham. |
| Dr Stuart Ryder | Macquarie University | |
| Turgay Caglar | Texas A & M University | As a researcher, I believe that universities should protect scientific curiosity, academic freedom, and long-term investment in fundamental research. Physics and astronomy are not only fields that expand human knowledge, but also inspire future generations and drive technological progress. I am deeply saddened about decisions that may weaken internationally recognized research environments and reduce opportunities for students and early-career scientists. Supporting science means supporting the future of innovation, education, and society itself. For these reasons, I stand in solidarity with the members of the School of Physics and Astronomy and support this open letter. |
| Marina Dunn | Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias | |
| Dr Ewan O'Sullivan | Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian | |
| Dr Eleanor Nichols | University of Bath | |
| Dr Franz Kirsten | Chalmers University of Technology | |
| José Pedro Mimoso | University of Lisbon, Faculty of Science & Institute of Astrophysics | |
| Prof. Kirpal Nandra | Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics | |
| Francesca Di Lodovico | King's College London | |
| Daniel Foulds-Holt | University of Edinburgh | |
| Cecilia Scannapieco | Physics Department, University of Buenos Aires | |
| Dr. Stephen Molyneux | University of Oslo | I was an undergrad in the physics and astronomy department in Nottingham and |
| Dr. Kevin O'Brien | Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München | |
| Andrew Connolly | University of Manchester | Cutting departments to cover losses made by poor management decisions flies entirely in the face of what universities are for. |
| Gary Mamon | IAP, Paris | Since the turn of the millennium, the United Kingdom and Europe have been falling behind the United States in standard of living and behind the US and China in the high-technology industry. Given the more contentious international relations, this implies that the UK and Europe are on the road to become vassals of the US and/or China. This situation cries for strong investments in hard science, as the Chinese, Koreans, and other asian countries have been doing since the start of the millennium or much earlier. In this context, the news that some permanent Physics faculty might lose their positions at the University of Nottingham is not only completely shocking, but also utterly short-sighted! This is even more surprising that the decision to terminate academic contracts is occurring at the School of Physics of the University of Nottingham. This institution includes the Astronomy Group, where the tenured faculty are all well respected world leaders, making the Astronomy Group one of the very top in the UK, just behind Cambridge, Oxford, and Edinburgh, despite its small size. I hope that this petition and the messages therein will convince the decision makers at the University of Nottingham to reconsider their decision to break the tenure contracts of several of their Physics faculty. |
| Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, Vera Rubin Presidential Professor | University of California, Santa Cruz | |
| Aleksandar Ivanov | University of Vienna | |
| Elisa Prandini | Padova University | |
| Diego Pallero Astargo | Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María | |
| Subodh Patil | Leiden University | |
| Samuel Godwood | University of Liverpool | |
| Don Pollacco | University of Warwick | |
| Dr. Gonzalo Vallejo Fernandez | University of York | |
| Yure Yure | UCLA | |
| Dr. Michael Biermann | University of Heidelberg | Such a drastic cut in staff at such a prestigious institution is more than just short-sighted. We need more, not fewer, highly educated young people in physics and astronomy. A hasty, ill-considered reduction can be done quickly, but rebuilding the program will take a very long time. I truly hope that this misguided decision will be reconsidered and corrected. |
| Dr. Marcel van Daalen | Leiden University | |
| Dr. Eric Danielson | The University of Texas at Austin | |
| Amory B. Lovins | Stanford University | |
| Nadine Neumayer | Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy | |
| Dr. Yuming Fu | Leiden University | |
| Andoni Skoufris | University of Queensland | I'm a PhD student in physics and a large reason I'm where I am today is because of all the amazing support I received from so many faculty at my institution. Cutting jobs creates a less productive environment for both students and for research scientists and is beneficial to no one. |
| Dr. Rubina Kotak | University of Turku, Finland | |
| Qing Liu | Leiden University | |
| Danny van der Haven | Shanghai Jiao Tong University | I support this petition. |
| Volfango Bertola | University of Liverpool | |
| Patrick McDonald | Lawrence Berkeley National Lab | |
| Dr. Amir Ebadati Bazkiaei | Macquarie University | |
| Prof. David Valls-Gabaud | CNRS - Observatoire de Paris | First, this a textbook example of cognitive dissonance. As academics, we strive to pursue the Humboldtian ideal but, at the same time, we are allowing managers to run our universities, hence we are giving up our hard-won freedom from political and economical powers. Wise heads with long-term vision know it takes decades-long efforts to build world-class teams, but months to destroy them for short-term gains to compensate for mismanagement. Universities have not, are not and should never be market-driven companies. If the history of universities teaches us anything, is that they must also be free from political interference, and there is no need here to repeat J.D. Vance's words that "universities are the enemy", precisely for this independence. Academics should take back the management of universities. Vanity projects, or pseudo-campuses in Malaysia and China in the case of Nottingham, would have never been allowed under the Humboldtian model. Second, this is also a direct attack to the tenure system, perhaps the very basic tenet of academia. The reaction must be swift and many actions should be carried out at once, such as nation-wide strikes, refusal to mark exam papers and delay paperwork to ensure students will not be able to graduate. Students and staff must join academics in these actions, as it is the fate of universities which is at stake. This sad episode is not an isolated epiphenomenon, but rather the latest attempt at keeping universities under control. |
| Emanuele Berti | Johns Hopkins University | |
| Prof Laura Lopez | The Ohio State University | |
| Shuowen Jin | Technical University of Denmark | |
| Dr. Mark P. M. Dean | Brookhaven National Laboratory | |
| Amber Tilly | University of Southern Queensland | |
| Gray Rybka | University of Washington | It is a poor decision to direct cuts towards a high-performing department like this. |
| Bo Milvang-Jensen | University of Copenhagen | I urge the University's leadership to reconsider these destructive and short-sighted cuts. The comments from the signatories to this petition make clear the depth of concern across the international physics and astronomy community. |
| Dr. Emma Carli | Swinburne University of Technology | |
| Yoelsy Leyva | Universidad de Tarapacá | |
| Simon Murphy | University of Southern Queensland | |
| Dr. Anais Möller | Swinburne University of Technology | |
| Shyam H Menon | Flatiron Institute | |
| Prof. Andrew Mannix | Stanford University, Department of Materials Science and Engineering | |
| Valentina Di Marco | University of Melbourne | |
| Pierre Kervellz | Observatoire de Paris | |
| Dr Frank J. Qu | Stanford (NASA Einstein Fellow) | |
| Keshav R Menon | Indian Institute of Science | This cut to a highly recognised physics department that does excellent work, both in terms of pure science as well as in outreach and communication, is shameful. Not only will this result in a reputational cost to the University, but a material one as well as is laid out in the main body of the petition. This short-sighted decision will cause a loss of trust in and genuine scholarly output of the university for many years to come if it is allowed to go ahead. |
| Thanusit Burinprakhon | Physics Department, Khon Kaen University, Thailand | |
| Andronikos Paliathanasis | Durban University of Technology | |
| Dhruv Pasari | Durham university | |
| Dr. Francesco Flammini Dotti | New York University Abu Dhabi | I fully support this open letter. It is a very badly thought move and should be immediately reconsider for the university and for the personeel affected by this. |
| Prof. Holger Gies | Friedrich Schiller University of Jena | |
| Femke Ballieux | Leiden Observatory | |
| Nicolas Kruse | Delft University of Technology | |
| Ruari Mackenzie | EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland | |
| Dr Ignacio Ferreras | Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias | |
| Borja Pérez Díaz | INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma | |
| Aida Ahmadi | ASTRON, The Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy | |
| Dr Tristan Valenzuela | Rutherford Appleton Laboratory | |
| Dr. Rob McGibbon | Leiden University | |
| Sam Kirwin-Jones | University of Queensland | |
| Prof. Stefano Facchini | University of Milan | |
| Dr Edward Breeds | Nottingham Trent University | Our colleagues at the University of Nottingham - academic, technical, and professional services - contribute to critical advances in the physical sciences and immeasurable impact to our surrounding communities. The sudden and severe reduction of team members at this University will have consequences on the sciences impossible to predict, as well as the easy-to-predict and negative human effects on those that both remain and leave, students and staff. Many of us are living the uneasy landscape of UKHE at the moment, but this action feels a particularly reactive and poorly thought through way to manage our circumstances. My thoughts are with my many friends and colleagues at UoN. |
| Anna Chiara Ferri | Sapienza University of Rome | |
| Eimantas Kriščiūnas | Center for Physical Sciences and Technology | |
| Houri Ziaeepour | Universte de Franche Comte, France and University College London, UK (emeritus) | When money is tight one of the first apparent "saving" means is fundamental science such as physics and astronomy. Unfortunately, governments do not realise that cutting funds for physics is like destroying the base of a building to save bricks ! The shortage of investment on the foundation will impact the progress for generations. |
| Luna Espinosa | University of São Paulo | |
| Simon Schleich, Msc | University of Vienna | |
| Dr Markus Hundertmark | Heidelberg University | |
| Ana Contreras Santos | Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias | |
| Ieva Jankute | Durham University | |
| Prof. James Lucietti | University of Edinburgh | |
| Dr. Ho-Hin Leung | University of Edinburgh | |
| Prof. Darren Price | University of Manchester | |
| Aparna Venkateshwaran | Cardiff University | |
| Girish Vishwa | The University of Edinburgh | |
| Maddie Silcock | University of Hertfordshire | |
| Anatoly Konechny | Heriot-Watt University | |
| H. W. A. Riaz | Zhejiang Normal University | |
| Alexander MacKinnon | University of Glasgow | |
| Giulio Falcioni | Università di Torino e INFN | |
| Dr Karen Syres | University of Lancashire | |
| Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Weiskopf | Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany | |
| Rashi Jain | University of Southampton | |
| Dr Meg Schwamb | Queen's University Belfast | Nottingham is a world leading research centre for Physics and Astronomy. These proposed redundancies will cause significant damage the global impact and prestige of the University and UK science. |
| Prof. Patrik Öhberg | Heriot-Watt University | |
| Dr. Jonathan Davies | Liverpool John Moores University | Cutting 1/3 of staff and overburdening those who survive with an impossible teaching load will have disastrous results, for all who work and study at Nottingham. |
| Mostafa Alyannezhadi | TU Wien, Atominstitut | |
| Dr. Ryan Milligan | Queen's University Belfast | |
| Anna Watts | University of Amsterdam | |
| Dr. Susana Barros | Universidade do Porto | |
| Prof Stephen Smith | Oxford University | |
| Richard Davison | Heriot-Watt University | |
| Prof Andrew Pilkington | University of Manchester | |
| Roberto Raddi | Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya | |
| Ian Strachan | University of Glasgow | |
| Tamara Caldas | Institute for Theoretical Physics | |
| dr. Christian Groeneveld | INAF - IRA | |
| Diganta Bandopadhyay | Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics | |
| Dr Harry Ciff | University of Cambridge | |
| José Miguel Figueroa-O'Farrill | The University of Edinburgh | |
| Dan Tassie | Institute of Cosmology & Gravitation, University of Portsmouth | |
| Dr Christopher Syme | University of Glasgow | Cutting staff at the School of Physics & Astronomy at Nottingham is self-defeating and a huge step in the wrong direction. Please reverse this decision and protect highly skilled and valued jobs. |
| Dr. Leindert Boogaard | Leiden Observatory | |
| Vesa Björn | University of Helsinki | |
| Sindhu Satyavolu | ||
| Prof. Francis Keenan | Queen's University Belfast | |
| Dr. Ro Jefferson | Utrecht University | |
| Jelle Hartong | University of Edinburgh | |
| George Papamikos | University of Essex | |
| Dr Julia Sisk Reynes | Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian | |
| Prof. Joshua Tan | City University of New York | Nottingham Physics is world class, know by my students through its high profile presence in YouTube videos and academic published works. To hamstring the department through redundancy would be a crime inflicted upon the world. |
| Evie King | Astrophysics Research Institute, Liverpool | |
| Dr. Gianluca Gagliardi | National Institute of Optics (INO), Italian Research Council (CNR) | NU is a leading academic institution, thus a staff cut would be a serious lack for the scientific community and the students. In addition, any large cut of university staff suggests serious flaws in management and does not imply any real plan. Wrong decision, no improvement expected, lots of social problems and damage. |
| Luke Drury MRIA MAE FInstP, Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics | Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies | I sign in solidarity with colleagues from Nottingham, some of whom I have worked with in the past on ESA committees. |
| Huy The Nguyen | Queen Mary University of Londn | |
| Sebastián Nuza | Institute for Astronomy and Space Physics (IAFE) - University of Buenos Aires (UBA) - CONICET | |
| Dr Timothy Moorsom | University of Leeds | |
| Dr Julia Healy | University of Manchester | |
| Daniel Williams | University of Glasgow | |
| Stéphane Jacquemoud | Université Paris Cité | |
| Anthony Gonzalez | University of Florida | The proposed cuts look truly devastating both from a reputational and practical perspective. I have great respect for the world-class astrophysics group that has been built at Nottingham, and encourage consideration of alternatives that do not destroy the core capabilities of this school and institution. |
| Prof. Kimberly Palladino | University of Oxford | |
| Oliver Shattock | UCL | |
| Dr Michael Stringer | University of Glasgow | |
| Elliot Davies | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | The physics department Nottingham at are a huge part of the reason I am a scientist today, thanks to their impressive online presence when I was young! |
| Dr Matthew Birkbeck | Newcastle upon Tyne NHS FT & Newcastle University | Yet another example of the erosion of science and education. Good luck to all those fighting this injustice. |
| Dr Chiara Coletti | University of Oxford | |
| Linn Kantseva | Heidelberg University | |
| David Buckley | University of Leeds | |
| Jun. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hendrik Mattern | Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg | |
| Hannah Parsler | Durham University | |
| Caitlin O'Brien | Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust & King's College London | The Physics & Astronomy department at the University of Nottingham is a Nobel Prize-winning and world-renowned research department. As a graduate of the Physics Undergraduate program, I can speak to the quality of the teaching delivered by the staff, academics and admin alike, and the attention to detail that goes into designing the degree course. This simply isn't possible without the staff to maintain and deliver it. Cuts to the department, due to financial mismanagement of executives in the university, show an astounding level of shortsightedness. |
| Kieren Hollingsworth | Newcastle University | |
| Dr Nabeelah Jinnah | Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust | Signing as a recent PhD graduate in MRI physics from the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, University of Nottingham. The School has made a major contribution to MRI research and training, and I am deeply concerned by the impact these redundancies would have on staff, students, and the wider research community. |
| Dr Rory Brown | The Christie NHS Foundation Trust | You cannot cut your way to a healthy and successful university. This would be a loss to both Nottingham and to the wider physics community. |
| Francesco Padormo | Siemens Healthineers | |
| Professor Karin Shmueli | University College London | |
| Dr Jimmy Ball | King's College London | As a graduate of UoN Physics & Astronomy, I am deeply concerned by the proposed staff redundancies. This decision threatens student recruitment, the quality of teaching and the career prospects of future graduates. To prevent irreparable damage to Nottingham's reputation as an outstanding institution, these cuts must be reversed. |
| Rebecca Baker | University College London | |
| Yassine Azma | Imperial College London | |
| Steven P Sourbron | University of Sheffield | |
| Masha Novoselova | Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre, University of Cambridge | |
| Vasilios Zarikas | University of Thessaly | |
| Professor Martin Graves | University of Cambridge | The University of Nottingham has played a globally important role in MRI research, innovation, and education for decades. Its School of Physics and Astronomy has been central to advances in MRI physics, imaging technology, and clinical translation, helping to train generations of scientists, physicists, and clinicians who now contribute across the NHS, academia, and industry worldwide. The potential loss of such a large proportion of staff risks damaging an internationally respected centre of excellence at a time when imaging science and medical technology are more important than ever. |
| Andrada Ianus | King's College London | |
| Benjamin Scully | University of Toronto | |
| Dr. Tobias Looser | Harvard University | |
| Dr. John Evans | Cardiff University | |
| Maura Pilia | INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari | |
| Dr. Hongyan Liu | University of Oxford | |
| Prof Felix Binder | Trinity College Dublin | |
| Dr David Higgins | Philips | |
| Frank Winklmeier | University of Oregon | Reducing investment into research and especially research personnel, is a very short sighted "solution". In five years time the university will be in an even worse situation, with less students, less income and less research being done. Even your top leading scientist will choose to go elsewhere as we have seen recently happening in other countries that (threaten to) reduce funding. |
| Professor Harish Poptani | University of Liverpool | Appaling and shortsighted. The decision should be reconsidered to protect one of the best Physics and Astronomy department towards continued excellence in training and research |
| Sofie Ried | University of Sheffield | |
| Shiqian Hu | Aix-Marseille University | |
| Prof. Lauranne Lanz | The College of New Jersey | |
| Kavin Selvaraj | University of Sheffield | |
| Dr Krzysztof Klodowski | University of Cambridge | |
| Dr. David J McGonigle | Cardiff University | I’m genuinely speechless: to say this is a worrying trend seems banal, given the increasing incidence of these maneuvers by university management in the UK. Join a Union! |
| Dr James Pidgeon | University of Sheffield | |
| Dr Alex Hague | University of Sheffield | |
| Jack Foulkes | Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust | |
| Prof. Mary McLean | University of Cambridge | Deeply shocking. This department is world class. |
| Prof Paul Skrzypczyk | University of Bristol | |
| Dr Christopher Taylor | Imperial College London | |
| Dr Andy Parnell | University of Sheffield | Very shortsighted and poor judgement from the senior leadership. |
| Dr Emiliano Munari | INAF - Astronomical Observatory of Trieste (Italy) | |
| Prof. Dan Tovey | University of Sheffield | |
| Dr George O’Neill | University College London | This department took in a child from a disadvantaged background and put their life on a trajectory they didn’t know could exist. To deny such an opportunity to others interested in Physics (or other departments around UoN) because central management were surprised their magic beans didn’t work is shameful. |
| Dr Laura Saunders | University of Sheffield | |
| Prof. Phil James | Liverpool John Moores University | |
| Prof Carole Haswell | The Open University | As a former external examiner for Nottingham's undergraduate physics degrees I was genuinely shocked by this news. Nottingham Physics is a truly excellent department for both research and teaching. This seems terribly misjudged. |
| Yashar Akrami | Instituto de Física Teórica (IFT) UAM-CSIC | |
| Edward W Kolb | University of Chicago | |
| Lloyd Knox | University of California, Davis | |
| Prof. Michele Cicoli | University of Bologna | |
| Steve Giddings, Distinguished Professor of Physics | University of California, Santa Barbara | |
| Jack Shergold | University of Liverpool | The work of our colleagues at the University of Nottingham speaks for itself, not least through their outstanding outreach and excellent research. Any proposed staff cuts would have consequences far beyond the university, putting at risk work that has inspired the next generation of scientists and affecting collaborators whose own excellent research depends on these partnerships. |
| Sougato Bose | University College London | |
| Antonio Racioppi | NICPB, Tallinn, Estonia | |
| Prof Chris Rodgers | University of Cambridge | Nottingham's MRI research at the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre in the Dept of Physics is world renowned. The University will soon host the new UK National 11.7T MRI. I urge you to maintain academic staffing for this top-tier department so they can continue their ground breaking research. |
| Niklas Kuegler | Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences | |
| Alex S Arvanitakis | Rudjer Boskovic Institute, Croatia | |
| Elisa Castanon | MRILab (Valencia, Spain) | |
| Dr Adrian Tang MA, FRCR, MRCP | Manchester University | This would be a poor decision for one of the homes of medical MRI. |
| David Imig | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | |
| Jonathan Birchall | University of Cambridge | |
| Prof. Yukihiro Kusano | Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology | It is unacceptable. |
| Dr. Andreas Pohlmann | Siemens Healthineers AG | |
| Dr. Nathan Rutherford | University of New Hampshire | |
| Prof. Wojciech Hellwing | Center for Theoretical Physics (Warsaw) | Firing staff from a world-class performing department should be the LAST place where a responsible University managers should look for savings. It might seem now like a sensible move that will fix the problem for now, but this resemble patching a leaky rain gutter by cutting out parts of a strong and healthy roof. Stop and rethink! Damage done now might be irreparable for years! |
| Prof. Matthias Steinmetz | Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), German Center for Astrophysics Görlitz (DZA), University of Potsdam | Getting people excited for STEM starts as early as in Kindergarten. Stars and Dinosaurs get the kids excited and is the entry ticket into STEM also at the University level. Axing Physics and Astronomy means axing your future. |
| Dr. Patrick Kamieneski | Chalmers University of Technology | |
| Shirin Davies | UHBW | |
| Bhavesh Rajpoot | Max Planck Institute for Astronomy | |
| Elizabeth Long | Charles University Prague | |
| Dr Alexis Smith, FRAS, MInstP | German Aerospace Center, Berlin | |
| Donatella Fiorucci | ENEA Frascati Research Centre, Italy | |
| Jesvita Menezes | University of Glasgow | |
| James Matthews | University of Oxford | |
| Jonathan Clark | Tennessee Wesleyan University | I've seen several local examples of budget cuts driving layoffs at institutions in my surrounding area. If this move by Nottingham is due to mismanagement, the consequences should fall to those responsible who are in charge, not the faculty who work to make the university so great. When being a professor, researcher, or student mentor at a university is considered "redundant" by the institution, it is clear that the higher-ups have lost the plot. What makes a university work are those who do the work therein, serving their students and collaborating with their colleagues to make discovery and innovation possible for everyone. It is unfortunately an uncertain time to be employed in secondary education, so we must stand together and support one other. |
| Alessandro Fassina | ENEA | |
| marieke postma | Nikhef | |
| william Barnes | University of Exeter | Universities are big businesses, Nottingham is not unusual in having an annual budget of approaching £1 billion, so that careful control of finances is essential. However, in the rush to run a business, UK universities seem to have lost sight of what their core business really is: helping students to learn, and carrying out leading research. These activities reply on trust, both within and beyond an organisation., yet trust is fragile, it is easily lost but so hard to regain. To end up in a situation where academic staff reductions are imposed as a knee-jerk reaction to financial pressure seems - at best - to be very poor planning and must certainly weaken trust. We need more inspirational leadership than this - simply responding to the market doesn’t cut it. |
| Changcheng | ift | |
| Diego Buccio | Heidelberg university | |
| Zahra Davari | Korea Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS) | Physics and astronomy are essential for scientific progress, innovation, and education. I fully support this initiative. |
| Zelekha Seedat | Young Epilepsy | As an alumnus of the School of Physics and Astronomy I am deeply saddened to hear that the resources I benefitted from as a student will be taken away from future generations. Every member of staff in the School of Physics and Astronomy is needed and the University as awhile should be celebrating the great work that is done there. |
| Dmitry Sayenko | Leipzig University | |
| Dr James Cranch | University of Sheffield | |
| Dr Christos Anastopoulos | University Of Sheffield | |
| Prof Jane Greaves | Cardiff University | |
| Dr. Sukannya Bhattacharya | IFT Madrid, Spain | |
| Professor Stephen McVitie | University of Glasgow | |
| Mariana Carrillo Gonzalez | Imperial College London and University of Southampton | |
| Dr. Samuel Sánchez López | Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris | |
| Tanju Cakar | University of Sheffield | |
| Mark Hollands | University of Warwick | |
| Charith Perera | UCL | |
| Dr. Ana Guijarro Román | Calar Alto Observatory, CAHA, Spain | There's always a smart, wise solution that goes beyond focusing solely on financial results. I was there 25 years ago, and it's an honor and a source of pride that will always be on my resume. Poor management can only bring down the manager, not the researchers and workers. |
| Panos Betzios | Ghent University | |
| Andrew Liddle | Institute for Astrophysics and Space Science, University of Lisbon | Nottingham Physics and Astronomy is a leading part of the UK University system. It is a department that many of us have always looked up to, to try and understand and emulate their many successes. Their brilliant introduction of an immediately impactful and now thriving astronomy activity has been a template for numerous similar initiatives in other UK universities. The threatened cuts will drastically impact student and staff morale and will lead to many of the key staff members leaving to seek more sympathetic environments. These proposed cuts must be rethought and cancelled immediately before yet further damage is done to this vital department. |
| José Javier | Instituto de Física Teórica | |
| Jacobo Asorey | Universidad de Zaragoza | |
| Juliette Monsel | Chalmers University of Technology | |
| Siawoosh Mohammadi | University of Luebeck | |
| Dr. Guido Roberts-Borsani | University College London | |
| Shuang Zhou | INAF-OABrera | As a former postdoctoral researcher in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Nottingham, I was genuinely astonished to hear this news. The scale of the proposed redundancies is deeply concerning and difficult to reconcile with the internationally recognised excellence of the department. During my time there, I experienced first-hand the strength, collegiality, and scientific impact of the group, which has built a reputation as a vibrant and globally respected centre of research and training, attracting talented students and researchers from around the world. Cuts of this magnitude risk causing lasting damage not only to the institution and the broader scientific community, but also to its ability to attract and retain international students and researchers. I strongly urge the university to reconsider these plans. |
| Jose L. F. Barbon | Institute of Theoretical Physics, Madrid | |
| Dr Elisa Da Ros | Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin | |
| Dario Benedetti | CNRS, Ecole Polytechnique | |
| Rogerio Riffel | UFRGS | |
| Dr. James Nianias | University of Hong Kong | |
| Yanina Biondi | Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany | |
| Anhad Bagga | University of Warwick | |
| Prof Mike Bode | Liverpool JMU | |
| Haluk Sengun | University of Sheffield | |
| Mostafa Cherif | CEA Saclay | |
| Ashley Chrimed | European Space Agency | |
| Niayesh Afshordi | University of Waterloo/ Perimeter Institute | The University of Nottingham is fortunate to have one of the most creative and respected groups of physicists and astronomers globally. Any redundancies that threaten this exceptional group would have irreparable damage to the future of science in the UK and beyond. I hope reason prevails and prioritizes long-term success over short-term financial savings. |
| Prof. Jochen Liske | University of Hamburg | |
| Qaisar Shafi | University of Delaware | Every effort should be made to make sure that the faculty members of one of the leading physics / astronomy/ astrophysics departments in Europe retain their positions. The high energy physics / cosmology group members in particular are playing a critical role in training the next generation scientists in leading areas such as AI, quantum computing, machine learning, data science and related fields |
| Dr. Guillermo Lara | Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics | |
| Sam Leeney | University of Cambridge | |
| William Hartley | University of Geneva | This is an unbelievably short-sighted decision, and an utterly disgraceful way to treat a department of talented and dedicated staff. |
| Dr. Abhijeet Borkar | Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences | |
| Marco de Cesare | Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Naples, Italy | |
| Patrick Denny | University of Limerick | Keep up the fight to preserve STEM education and research |
| Pierros Ntelis | Harbin Institute of Technology and Institute of Theoretical Physics of National University of Uzbekinstan | What can I say ? Look on my career, ... and please consider the following, is it good that Europe cannot support science anymore ? |
| Mariya Nizovkina | Radboud University, Nijmegen | |
| Dr Anna Marchant | Rutherford Appleton Laboratory | |
| Max Kurzner | University of Victoria | |
| Prof. Peter Athron | Nanjing Normal University | |
| Dr Lucy Oswald | University of Cambridge | |
| Nathaniel Woodcock | Durham University | |
| Dr. Ignacio Sevilla | CIEMAT | |
| Prof Markus Barth | The University of Queensland | |
| Lynnie Saade | Universities Space Research Association | |
| Dr Stefania Barsanti | University of Sydney | |
| Dr Jack Christopher Mark Hughes | Khalifa University | Complete nonsense. The masters programme is one of the best in the country! |
| Maret Einasto | Tartu Observatory, Tartu University | |
| Dr. Tom Killestein | University of Warwick | |
| Dr Harry Lane | University of Manchester | |
| Surya Sundar Raman | UBC, TRIUMF, CERN | |
| Rosario Gonzalez Ferez | Universidad de Granada | |
| Dr. Karin Markenroth Bloch | Lund University | |
| Jan M. Pawlowski | Heidelberg University | |
| Costanza Toninelli | CNR | |
| Prof Ferdia Gallagher | University of Cambridge | |
| Andrea Ciardi | Observatoire de Paris | |
| Venus Keus | Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS) | |
| Prof. Pieter Claeys | Trinity College Dublin | |
| Dr. Francois Mernier | IRAP, Toulouse University | |
| Prof. Laura Kreidberg | Max Planck Institute for Astronomy | |
| Mulan Madden | Leiden University | |
| Jack Woodruff | University of Sheffield | |
| Guillermo Ballesteros | Universidad Autónoma de Madrid | |
| Dr. Larissa Palethorpe | University of Bristol | |
| Dr Robert Oliver | University of Sheffield | |
| Matthias Nowinski | Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München | |
| Gia Dvali | MPP | |
| Joris Raeymaekers | IOP, Czech Academy of Sciences | |
| Ryan Smith | University of Leeds | |
| Prof. David Ritchie | University of Cambridge and Swansea University | I was very sad to hear of this proposal, the University should think again. The Physics Department at Nottingham has operated at a very high level for many years. |
| Dr Mobeen Ali | University Hospital Southampton | This is a short sighted move that will greatly damage a world class research group and the reputation of the University. |
| Francesco Bigazzi | INFN, Firenze, Italy | |
| Giovanni Modugno | LENS and University of Florence, Italy | |
| LEANDROS PERIVOLAROPOULOS | University of ioannina | Save Nottingham Physics and Astronomy |
| Alessandro Marconi | unifi | |
| Dr Kacper Pilarczyk | AGH University of Krakow | |
| Vladislav Gavryusev | University of Florence, Department of Physics and Astronomy | |
| Elisa Torrigiani Malaspina | University of Florence | |
| Dr Petros Wallden | University of Edinburgh | |
| Prem Kumar | Swansea University | Shocked to hear this unpleasant news, especially in times when it is more important than ever before to nurture, protect, and invest in, science for present and future generations. Hope better sense will prevail |
| David Colquhoun | UCL | A university without a thriving physics department shouldn't call itself a university. |
| Arran Johnston | University of Bath | |
| Owen White (MInstP) | The Institute of Cancer Research | |
| Lapo Bogani | University of Florence | The decision to dismiss this large group of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Members at the University of Nottingham, through no fault of their own, is appalling and should be reversed immediately. |
| Marc Huertas-Company | Instituto de astrofísica de Canarias | |
| Olivia Murray | University of Manchester | |
| Prof Laura Parkes | University of Manchester | This large cut to the physics department is a backwards and damaging step for the UK. Nottingham physics leads the development of MRI physics and maintains the UKs world-leading expertise in this critical field. |
| Professor Paul Meredith OBE | Centre for Integrative Semiconductor Materials, Swansea University | Yet more shortsighted actions to mitigate a systemic problem in the UK University sector. The UK's Modern Industrial Strategy, and indeed the very fabric of our economy is threatened by actions such as these. At a time of global multi-crisis we need more physicists not less! |
| Professor Tony Kenyon | UCL | It makes no sense to cut positions at one of the UK's leading Physics departments. It will greatly harm both Nottingham's and the UK's standing in the research community. |
| Prof Robert-Jan Slager | University of Manchester | |
| Lidija Siller | Newcastle University | |
| Professor Lidija Siller | Newcastle University | |
| Roberta Zambrini | CSIC | |
| Dieter Lüst | Max-Planck-Institute for Physics | |
| Gerasimos Rigopoulos | Newcastle University | The mere thought of a world class Physics department being targeted in this way with redundancies is ludicrous. Such short sighted decisions do nothing but further damage the (once great) reputation of British Academia, not to mention the devastation of a very special group of people who have devoted their lives to understanding Nature. |
| Prof. Diederik Roest | University of Groningen (Netherlands) | |
| Prof Paul Brennan | UCL | |
| Dr. Emre Kopanoglu | Cardiff University | |
| Jiachen Jiang | University of Warwick | |
| Simona Mei | University Paris Cite | |
| Sanjeev Kumar | University College London | |
| Julia Lienert | Max Planck Institute for Astronomy | |
| Holger Israel | TIB - Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology (Hannover, Germany) | |
| Dr Andrew Spiers | University College Dublin | |
| Marco Bellini | Istituto Nazionale di Ottica (CNR-INO), Italy | |
| Giuseppe Falci | University of Catania | As a physicist and academic, I support this petition and warmly hope that the University of Nottingham reconsider these proposed redundancies. |
| Dr Ed Bennett | Swansea University | |
| Girish Kulkarni | Tata Institute of Fundamental Research | I have had the privilege of collaborating with researchers in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Nottingham for more than a decade. This collaboration has produced science of extremely high quality and international impact in astrophysics and cosmology. My experience has been that Nottingham Physics and Astronomy is an intellectually vibrant, collegial, and globally respected research environment. Compulsory redundancies on the scale proposed would cause lasting harm, not only to individual careers, but to a research culture and international reputation built patiently over many years. I strongly urge the University to reconsider these plans and to seek an alternative path that protects the long-term strength of Physics and Astronomy at Nottingham. |
| Lorenzo | SISSA | |
| stefano cavalieri | Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università dii Firenze | |
| Gabriele Calusi | University of Florence | |
| Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo | Université de Montréal | Physics and astronomy are not luxuries; they are foundational disciplines that drive innovation, technological progress, and the training of future generations of scientists. Cuts of this magnitude to a globally recognized department risk lasting damage to research excellence, education quality, and international competitiveness. |
| Dr Martin Wilson | University of Birmingham | A myopic decision that will damage UK science for years to come. Hopefully UON are able to see sense and quickly reverse this process. |
| Ewald Puchwein | Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam | |
| Cristian Camilo Fajardo Arenas | IIP/UFRN | |
| Silvia Lucia Correa Angel | Internacional Institute of Physics - University of Oslo | |
| Brian Thomas | Washburn University, Physics & Astronomy | |
| Lorenzo Morelli | Universidad de Atacama | |
| Claire FEIERSTEIN | Cnrs | |
| Marta Felcini | University College Dublin | |
| Raffaele Tito D'Agnolo | CEA IPhT Saclay and ENS Paris | |
| Patrick Hennebelle | Paris-Saclay | |
| Jaume Garriga | ICCUB, Dept. Quantum Physics and Astrophysics, University of Barcelona | The University of Nottingham has long been recognised internationally for its strength in gravity, cosmology and theoretical physics. The department has hosted outstanding scientists whose work has had major impact across cosmology, gravitation, dark matter and fundamental theory, while also training many young researchers who now contribute across academia worldwide. The proposed cuts risk causing lasting damage to one of the UK’s most respected groups in these areas. |
| M. Olalla Olea Romacho | King's College London | |
| Gabriel CHARLES | CNRS | |
| Lopez-Martens | CNRS | |
| Olcyr Sumensari | CNRS | |
| Pasquale Dario Serpico | CNRS, France | |
| Alex Arbey | Lyon 1 University | Research is Future. |
| Russell Jones | University of Glasgow | |
| Sara Marcatili | CNRS | |
| David Miller | University of Glasgow | |
| George Brydon | University of Glasgow | |
| Katie Walkingshaw Pass | University of Glasgow | |
| Will Lloyd | University of Manchester | |
| Professor Francois Gieres | IP2I, University of Lyon 1, France | |
| Jean-Baptiste Melin | CEA Paris-Saclay | |
| Dr. Gary Robertson | University of Glasgow | |
| Dr Norman Gray | University of Glasgow | |
| Laporte Jean-Francois | CEA/IRFU/DPHP | |
| Niall McHugh | University of Glasgow | |
| Stanislav Babak | APC/CNRS | |
| Laura Blecha | University of Florida | |
| Dr James Howarth | University of Glasgow | |
| Fawzi BOUDJEMA | LAPTh, CNRS, Annecy, France | short-sighted, demoralising and a loss of institutional memory and expertise. Cutting academic positions sends also a troubling message to younger generations: that experience, loyalty, and long-term intellectual investment are ultimately disposable. It risks creating a culture in which people no longer believe that dedication and expertise will be valued over short-term cost calculations. ..Nottingham sans physics, UK sans physics,UK sans science, UK sans.... |
| Damir Buskulic | Université Savoie Mont Blanc / Laboratoire d'Annecy de Physique des Particules | |
| Marie Treyer | Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille | |
| Prof Geraldine Servant | DESY and Hamburg Universität | |
| Jessy DANIEL | CNRS | |
| Dr. David d'Enterria | CERN, Geneva, Switzerland | |
| Dr Rachel Montgomery | University of Glasgow | |
| Dr Elizabeth Passey | University of Glasgow | Staff are a university's most valuable asset and should be treated with the respect that this is the case. Without academic and technical staff a university ceases to be. Even if we ignored the devastating effect these cuts will have on the individuals involved, how can the University of Nottingham expect the remaining academic and technical staff to maintain the current level of research and teaching in the physics department? The impact these redundancies will have on the UoN physics department cannot be understated and will be devastating. |
| Philip Adsley | Texas A&M University | |
| Samuel Skipsey | University of Glasgow | |
| Xavier Rojas | Royal Holloway University of London | |
| Michel Bauer | IPhT, CEA, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay | |
| Bjoern Seitz | University of Glasgow | |
| Dr Rachel Gray | University of Glasgow | |
| Petrini | Sorbonne Université | |
| CHAPELLIER | CNRS/UNIVERSITY PARIS SACLAY | Universities among other institutions make World Human |
| Nitin Rughoonauth | University of Mauritius | |
| Jonathan Biteau | University Paris Saclay | |
| Yang Liu | Tsinghua University | |
| Dr Greg Hallewell | Aix-Marseille Université, Centre de Physique des Particules de Marseille (Emeritus) | |
| Dr Cécile Roucelle | Université Paris Cité - CNRS | |
| Dr. Andreas Goudelis | Laboratoire de Physique de Clermont Auvergne, CNRS and Université Clermont Auvergne | |
| Dr Emma Pearce | University of Glasgow | |
| Fred Rendell-Bhatti | University of Glasgow | |
| Paul E Barrett | The George Washington University | There has got to be a better way. |
| Manuel Andia | University of Paris-Saclay | |
| Dr. Alexandre Boucaud | APC – CNRS/IN2P3 | |
| Dr. Dominique Boutigny | CNRS-LAPP | |
| Alexander Daniels | NYU School of Medicine (Biophysics) | |
| Prof. Björn Herrmann | LAPTh Annecy / Univ. Savoie Mont Blanc | |
| Prof. Ignacio Negueruela | University of Alicante | When a change in direction is needed, it should be clever and practical, not suicidal. |
| Marina Lafarga Magro | University of Warwick | |
| Johan Bregeon | CNRS / IN2P3 / LSPC | no way! |
| Prof. Nazila Mahmoudi | Lyon University | |
| Sacha Davidson | CNRS, University of Lyon-1 | |
| Dr. M. Cristina Volpe | CNRS, Astroparticle and Cosmology Laboratory, Paris | |
| Jean-Philippe Lansberg | Paris-Saclay University | |
| Prof. Eric Polizzi | UMass Amherst, USA | |
| Manuel Cavieres | Leiden University | |
| chevalier laurent | CEA-Paris-Saclay University | |
| Prof Sonja Franke-Arnold | University of Glasgow | |
| Donatella Cassettari | University of St Andrews | |
| Abigail Bellamy-Carter | University of Birmingham | As a graduate of this department, these cuts are short sighted and caused by the poor financial decisions elsewhere in the institution. Cuts on this scale in the physics and chemistry departments will fundamentally destroy the education in the physical sciences at this institution. |
| Anatael Cabrera | CNRS / Université Paris-Saclay | |
| W. Brian Lane | University of North Florida | The type of outreach this department is engaged in is crucial for building public trust in science. |
| Dr. Jindra Gensior | University of Edinburgh | |
| Gines MARTINEZ | Subatech, CNRS, Nantes, France | This is the worst possible solution for the University of Nottingham’s financial situation. We need to understand how the university’s current administrators have ended up in this situation and propose a long-term recovery plan, rather than taking short-term actions that will only make the University of Nottingham’s situation even worse. Those in charge of the administrators should urgently focus on devising a smart long-term plan, as the current administrators seem quite incompetent. |
| Sanika Khadkikar | The Pennsylvania State University | |
| Jaime Dawson | APC, Université Paris Cité | |
| Mathieu PERRIN-TERRIN | CNRS - Marseille | |
| Prof Mark Gieles | ICREA / University of Barcelona | |
| Andrea Floris | University of Lincoln | |
| Prof. Aldo Deandrea | University Lyon 1 | |
| Prof. Frédéric Yermia | Nantes Université, France | |
| Ruth Gregory | King’s College London | |
| Dr. Pi N. Nuessle | The George Washington University | |
| William Stafford | University of Edinburgh | |
| Sayan Neogi | Pennsylvania State University | |
| Jose Betrán Jiménez | Universidad de Salamanca | |
| Mauro Paternostro | University of Palermo | |
| Michael Winn | Université Paris-Saclay, CEA Saclay | |
| Nicolas Labrosse | University of Glasgow | |
| NORTIER Florian | CNRS/IN2P3, IP2I Lyon, France | |
| Thomas Duguet | CEA, France | |
| Prof. Paddy Regan FInstP | University of Surrey & Thr National Physical Laboratory. | The proposed redundancies are the typical management 'permanent solution to a temporary problem'. The scientific home of Prof. Peter Mansfield must remain a key part of the UK physics infrastructure and a more positive and sustainable solution to the current financial crisis must be possible. |
| Prof. Mauro Ferreira | Trinity College Dublin | |
| Cormac McGuinness | Trinity College Dublin | Nottingham Physics and Astronomy department have multiple world leading physicists and scientists who have contributed enormously to UK, European and Global scientific goals and challenges for the future. They have consistently been at the cutting edge doing relevant fundamental and applied research, with significant publication records and impact. Their standing, and their reflected glory on the status of the University of Nottingham, is dependent upon their continued research activity underpinned by the research fellows, technical staff and senior professorial staff. The most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF) assessment of 2021 ranked the Physics and Astronomy Department seventh of the 44 UK physics departments, second only to Cambridge over the last three assessments. Further, and not inconsequentially they are regularly featured at the center of one of the most effective science education channels on Youtube and through this contribute greatly to the public understanding of science within the UK and further afield. This excellence as an institution within the UK must be safeguarded. |
| Prof. Giovanni Costantini | University of Birmingham | |
| Benjamin Massoteau | IP2I | |
| Camille Ducoin | Université Lyon 1 | |
| Prof. Estelle Moraux | IPAG, University Grenoble Alpes | |
| Prof. Neale Gibson | Trinity College Dublin | |
| Robert Turner | Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences | The Nottingham University Physics and Astronomy department has been the cradle of the most important new medical diagnostic modality discovered in the last 50 years, and it continues to lead MRI and MEG worldwide in its current research. The other research activities in the department are also of world standard, and the physics teaching standards are exceptionally high. It would be completely senseless to make cuts in a department that has given the university its most worldwide acclaim and attractiveness to students. |
| Tom Macdonald | University College London | |
| Etlir Xharra | University of Ghent | |
| Hassaan Saleem | SUNY Albany | Firing physicists to address a financial deficit is deeply misguided. A university’s purpose is to advance education and research, not to function primarily as a profit-driven institution. Choosing to cut the very people who sustain academic life sends the wrong message about its priorities. Financial deficits can be addressed through other measures, such as reducing unnecessary spending or reevaluating institutional assets. Removing researchers and educators, however, weakens the intellectual community and strips the university of the very people who give it purpose and identity. |
| Andrew White | University of Queensland | |
| Armando Angrisani | EPFL | |
| Bangalore Sathyaprakash | The Pennsylvania State University | Colleagues at Nottingham are engaged in cutting edge research. Redundancies at any level are bad but university's plan to reduce staff levels at this magnitude will be devastating to not only the reputation of the University but also a huge loss to the international community. I urge the University to step back from this unwise decision. |
| Maxim Chernodub | U. Tours | |
| Caroline Riggall | University of Tennessee | |
| Professor John Joseph Carrasco, Ph.D. | Northwestern University | |
| Dr. Luke Barnes | Western Sydney University | |
| Cedric Delaunay | CNRS LAPTh | |
| Yash Gursahani | University of Maryland, College Park | |
| Emiliano Jofré | Emiliano Jofré | I express my deepest solidarity with the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Nottingham from Argentina, where our scientific and educational community is currently experiencing the brutal and destructive funding cuts of our government. The dismantling of basic science and the enforcement of compulsory redundancies is a short-sighted, global threat to knowledge. These measures do not just destroy academic careers; they compromise the very future of society. Full support to the staff fighting these layoffs |
| Hector Spencer-Wood | University of Glasgow | |
| Dr Aditya Khanna | Virginia Tech | Many inspiring personalities are at risk and it would be horrible for coming generations to lose such important educators. |
| Dr. Marc Knecht | CNRS-Marseille | |
| Peter Klagyivik | FU Berlin | |
| Constantin Bachas | Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris | |
| Lydia Roos | LPNHE (CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université Paris Cité) | |
| Prof. Géraldine Haack | University of Geneva | |
| Charles Dalang | École Normale Supérieure, Paris | If this can happen to our distinguished colleagues at the University of Nottingham , it will highly damage the university’s reputation and it will become more difficult to attract top international talent in physics to the UK, overall. |
| Prof. Yoann Génolini | LAPTh Annecy / Univ. Savoie Mont Blanc | |
| ILIOPOULOS JEAN | ECOLE NORMALE SUPERIEURE PARIS | |
| Dr Chris Messenger | University of Glasgow | |
| Alberto Terenzi | LENS - European Laboratory for nonlinear Spectroscopy | |
| Gabriele Mainetti | CC-IN2P3/CNRS | |
| CORDIER Alain | Universite Paris-Saclay, France | |
| Claire Cisowski | University of Glasgow | |
| Véronique Van Elewyck | Université Paris Cité | |
| Xiangwei Wang | Hong Kong University of Science and Technology | |
| Djannati-Ataï, Arache | APC laboratory, CNRS, Univ. Paris Cité | Astonishingly in the wrong direction -- |
| Riju Banerjee | National physical laboratory | |
| Fabrice Balli | CEA Paris-Saclay | |
| Giovanni Benetti | University of Padova | |
| Fabien Jeanneau | CEA Saclay | |
| Hongzhou Zhang | Trinity College Dublin | I strongly support this petition. The proposed cuts to Nottingham Physics and Astronomy are deeply short-sighted and risk causing lasting damage to teaching, research excellence, and the wider UK physics community. I urge the University to work with staff to find alternatives to compulsory redundancies. |
| Prof. Elisabeta Lusso | University of Florence, Department of Physics and Astronomy | |
| Prof Jörg Götte | University of Glasgow | I have had the pleasure of working with exceptional scientists who helped to build the reputation of Nottingham Physics. Compulsory redundancies of this scale will cause enormous and lasting harm — to the institution, to the careers of outstanding colleagues, and to UK physics as a whole. |
| Genevieve Belanger | LAPTh | |
| Louise Bradley | Trinity College Dublin | |
| Prof. Stefan Hutzler | School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland | Cutting funding for science strengthens the impact of misinformation in areas such as global warming and vaccination. |
| Torsten Bringmann | University of Oslo | |
| Jean-Marc Richard | University Lyon 1 and IP2I/IN2P3 | |
| Max Chefdeville | CNRS/IN2P3/LAPP | |
| Ema Maricic | CEA Paris-Saclay & Institute of Physics Belgrade | |
| Prof. Dimitrios Tsimpis | University of Lyon | |
| AJALTOUNI Ziad Professeur Emérite | LPCA Université Clermont Auvergne/CNRS-IN2P3 | Supporting fundamental research and researches |
| Siddharth Saxena | University of Cambridge | Slashing academic capabilities of this world class institution is akin to shooting onself in the head! |
| Clémentine Panetier | University Lyon 1, France | |
| Stéphane Grévy | CNRS / IN2P3 / LP2i-Bordeaux | |
| Michael Perreur-Lloyd | University of Glasgow | |
| Giulio Dujany | IPHC CNRS Strasbourg | |
| Benjamin Keedwell | University of Oxford | |
| Benjamin Fuks | LPTHE / Sorbonne Université | |
| Genevieve Soucail, Astronomer | Toulouse University, France | |
| Bertrand LAFORGE | Sorbonne Université | |
| René Sedmik | TU Wien | |
| Prokopii Anempodistov | Ecole Normale Superieure | |
| Dr Peter Kirton | University of Strathclyde | |
| Yunke Zhao | Southern University of Science and Technology & Hong Kong University of Science and Technology | |
| Beigbeder christophe | CNRS France | |
| Nicola Malavasi | Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) | |
| Francisco Cuadra | University of Florence | |
| Dr Richard Bates | The University of Glasgow | |
| Prof Daniel Thompson | Swansea | |
| Armando di Matteo | Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Sezione di Torino | |
| Ugnius Igaris | Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astronomy, Vilnius University | |
| Gemma Mei | UNIFI | |
| Paul Eastham | Trinity College Dublin | |
| Prof Peter Wahl | University of St Andrews | |
| Angus Bell | University of Glasgow | |
| Jean-Pierre DIDELEZ | Université Paris-Saclay, IJCLab | |
| Prof Ioannis Papakonstantinou | University College London | |
| Martin Evans | University of Edinburgh | The School of Physics and Astronomy in Nottingham carries out world-leading research and excellent teaching. This plan to slash the department is all wrong. |
| Brian Bichang'a | University of Hertfordshire | |
| L. Muir | University of Glasgow | |
| Dr. rer. nat. Frederik Testud | Siemens Healthcare AB | |
| Kenneth Livingston | University of Glasgow | |
| Ivan A. Rashid | Lund University | |
| Dr Sinan Deger | University of Cambridge | |
| Iolanda Matea | Université Paris Saclay | |
| Matthew Colless | Australian National University | The Nottingham astronomy group is world-class. Firing them would be a clear sign that Nottingham University leadership is bankrupt intellectually and morally, as well as financially. |
| Benedict Van den Bussche | University of Cambridge | |
| Rosaria Lena | University of Glasgow | In solidarity |
| Frank Neumann | University of Pavia | |
| Dr Leron Borsten | University Of Hertfordshire | Lamentably and short-sighted action that undoubtedly should be walked back. |
| Professor Pia Maly Sundgren | Lund University, Sweden | |
| Malwina Molendowska, PhD | Medical Radiation Physics, Lund University | |
| Emily Sandford | Leiden Observatory | |
| Dr Olivia Jones | University of Manchester | |
| Leonardo Maggiore | University of Edinburgh, Institute for Astronomy | |
| uwe thiele | Institute for Theoretical Physics & Center for Data Science and Complexity, University of Münster, Germany | |
| Dr. Laurane Fréour | University of Vienna | |
| Doojin Kim | University of South Dakota | |
| Scott Dodelson | University of Chicago | |
| Francesco Biccari | University of Florence (Italy) | |
| Cenk Kayhan | Kayseri University | |
| David Henaff | CEA/DRF/IRFU/DPhP | |
| Dr Sam Geen | SRON, NL | |
| Tobias Haas | Institute for Theoretical Physics, Ulm University, Germany | Cutting physics research in Nottingham is the equivalent of blundering a checkmate in one. Please reconsider this decision! |
| Prof Michael Baker | University of Massachusetts, Amherst | |
| Robert Edkins | University of Strathclyde | |
| Dan Hooper | University of Wisconsin-Madison | |
| Dr. Jae Goode | University of Edinburgh | As an alumna of the University of Nottingham I am saddened to see that the UoN administration is considering a course of action that would be so damaging to a top-class Physics and Astronomy institution. |
| Jason Spyromilio | European Southern Observatory | |
| Anne-Kathrin Baczko | Chalmers University of Technology | |
| Alina Mierna | University of Padua | |
| Roberto Silvotti | INAF-Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino | |
| Renann Lipinski Jusinskas | FZU - Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences | |
| Gordan Krnjaic | Fermilab & University of Chicago | |
| Dr. techn. Mohammadamin Tajik | Caltech | The damage caused by cuts of this scale extends far beyond a single department or the academic system. Physics relies on long-term international collaborations, shared expertise, and research communities that take decades to build. Weakening these foundations not only harms education and mentorship for future scientists, but also reduces the UK’s ability to develop its own technologies and scientific capabilities. If countries stop investing in fundamental research and training, they inevitably become dependent on others for future advances in technology, energy, and industry. Decisions like these may offer short-term financial relief, but they risk long-term damage to innovation, scientific independence, and Europe's position as a global leader in research and higher education. |
| Dr. Luciano Petruzziello | Universität Ulm | |
| Prof. Jeff Hartnell | University of Sussex | |
| Professor Antonella De Santo | University of Sussex | |
| Marios Petropoulos | CNRS - École polytechnique - Centre de Physique Théorique | unconditional support to undertaken actions |
| Viviana Caceres | The Pennsylvania State University | |
| Prof Fabrizio Salvatore | University of Sussex | |
| Dr Matthew Withers | University of Sussex | |
| Rose Finn | Siena University | |
| David Morrissey | TRIUMF | |
| Dr. Caleb Miller | Simon Fraser University | |
| Breanna Crompvoets | University of Victoria | Nottingham has been regarded as one of the best places for studying astronomy in the world. This action will severely damage Nottingham's global reputation, as well as causing injury to the field at large. |
| Prof. Justin Albert | University of Victoria | |
| Daniel Cecchi | University of Victoria | |
| Raphael Hoult | University of Victoria | |
| Lam Hui | Columbia University | |
| Praneet Pathak | University of Victoria, Canada | This decision is not fair and must be revoked immediately. |
| Lorenzo Buffoni | University of Florence | |
| Dr. James E. Hesser | Director (1986-2013) Emeritus, Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre, National Research Council of Canada | |
| Pauline Zarrouk | CNRS/LPNHE | |
| Dr Hendrik van Eerten | University of Bath | |
| Eugeny Babichev | CNRS, Paris-Saclay University | |
| Dr. Dominic Walton | University of Hertfordshire | |
| Prof. Nigel Cooper | University of Cambridge | |
| Ulrich Katscher | Philips Research Hamburg, Germany | |
| Andriy Yatsiv | University at Buffalo | The astrophysics community from Nottingham University has inspired me today to pursue graduate school for fluid mechanics. This community has inspired many more young students than me and it is important that this community remains to influence the future generation. |
| Tomás Ortín | IFT UAM-CSIC | |
| Prof Sugata Kaviraj | University of Hertfordshire | |
| Karpur Shukla | Brown University | |
| Ahmed Rakin Kamal | Masaryk University | |
| Prof. Zoran Hadzibabic | University of Cambridge | |
| Andrew Mizener | University of Massachusetts Amherst | |
| Professor Stephen Blundell | University of Oxford | |
| Hong Qi | Queen Mary University of London | |
| David A Huse | Princeton University | Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics |
| Prof Kristan Jensen | University of Victoria | |
| Professor Arijeet Pal | University College London | |
| Prof. Joseph Betouras | Loughborough University | The Physics department at Nottingham is of very high quality, this decision is as short-sighted as it gets. |
| Kranthi K Mandadapu | University of California, Berkeley | |
| Anatoli Polkovnikov | Boston University | |
| Prof Sean Giblin | Cardiff University | This risks damaging an internationally important teaching and research ecosystem, undermining scientific culture, and weakening long term economic output in the region and across the UK. It looks like vandalism. |
| Federico Carollo | Sapienza Università di Roma | I strongly support this petition, and I sincerely hope that the management will reconsider its plan to cut staff from the School of Physics and Astronomy. Physics at Nottingham is internationally recognised for its excellence and hosts world-class scientists, whose research, teaching and mentorship are central to its reputation. The prestige of both the School and the University is directly linked to the presence of these professors and researchers. Losing even a few of them would cause major disruption, with serious long-term consequences, including reduced ability to attract students and researchers to the University, in addition to the obvious reduction in research output, funding opportunities, and impact at all levels. Like me, hundreds of scientists have benefited enormously from the School’s outstanding intellectual environment and academic leadership. Protecting the School is essential not only for current staff and students, but also for the future strength of the University and for the future academic and technological standing of the UK. Rebuilding the excellence that the management is now planning to dismantle would take decades, and risks placing the University of Nottingham in a much weaker position nationally and internationally for many years to come. |
| jorge kurchan | ecole normale superieure, paris | |
| Pratyush Tiwary | University of Maryland College Park | This will be an irreversible loss. Really shocking news. Maybe the university made strange decisions which led to budget deficit, but two wrongs do not make a right. |
| Professor Andreas Dechant | Kyoto University | |
| Sadra Jazayeri | Imperial College London | |
| Jason D. Kahn | University of Maryland | The future needs every physicist and astronomer to help investigate and explain the present, so we can join with our children in solving the problems that the past has bequeathed to us. Cutting the department would be insanely short-sighted. |
| Christopher Jarzynski | University of Maryland, College Park. United States National Academy of Sciences. | Surely there must be a better solution. Please reconsider this drastic step. |
| Keiji Saito | Kyoto University | Such drastic cuts to academic staff would be an exceptionally short-sighted act, threatening to erode the high standards of fundamental science that the University of Nottingham has long upheld. I strongly call upon the University management to withdraw it. |
| Julien Tailleur | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | |
| Nicolas Yunes | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | |
| Piers Coleman | Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey | If the UK is to remain internationally competitive in science and technology, attractive to the finest talents, it needs to reassure the world that its positions in academia are secure and valued by university administration. If Nottingham goes ahead with these faculty cuts, this will be a warning to talent across the world, that the UK is no longer a safe harbor for global talent. Britain needs to speak up against these proposed cuts. Going forward, the Government should consider reversing the central provision of Margaret Thatcher's 1988 Education Reform Act which abolished tenure. |
| Prof. Markus Müller | Director PGI-2 Forschungszentrum Jülich, and RWTH Aachen University, Germnay | |
| Felix Ritort | Univ Barcelona | |
| Prof. Andrea Gambassi | SISSA - International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste (Italy) | |
| Prof. Fabian Essler | University of Oxford | Setting aside all other considerations, it seems obvious that such a move would lead to financial losses in the medium term due to the irreparable reputational damage incurred (which would result in a drop in quality due to the University's inability to attract first-rate academics). |
| Frank Verstraete | University of Cambridge | |
| van Wijland Frédéric | Université Paris Cité | |
| Massimiliano Esposito | University of Luxembourg | Cutting education and research while expanding defence budgets is a profound political choice. |
| Sebastian Hofferberth | University of Bonn | |
| Prof. Markus Hennrich | Stockholm University | I strongly support this open letter. I have collaborated with excellent scientists at Nottingham Physics for several years and have consistently been impressed by the department’s scientific quality and international standing. These cuts would seriously damage both the reputation of the University of Nottingham and the strength of physics research and education there. |
| Christian Flindt | Aalto University, Finland | |
| Sebastian Diehl | University of Cologne | |
| Giuseppe Mussardo | SISSA | Cutting university is a crime |
| Jean-Sébastien Caux | University of Amsterdam | A more justified and productive way for the university to save money would be to make cuts in the administration/management layer. Cutting into the scientific staff is just removing the foundations of the house, instead of the decorations. Utterly dumb. |
| Assoc. Prof. Sarah Blyth | Head of Department of Astronomy, University of Cape Town | |
| Prof. Dr. Tanja Schilling | Albert Ludwigs Universitat Freiburg, Germany | |
| Tomaž Prosen | University of Ljubljana | |
| Pasquale Calabrese | SISSA, Trieste | |
| Enrico Barausse | SISSA, Trieste, Italy | |
| Stefano Liberati | SISSA - International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste, Italy | |
| Prof. Mario Spera | SISSA | |
| Francesca Perrotta | SISSA | |
| Yan Fyodorov | King’s College London | |
| Austen Lamacraft | University of Cambridge | |
| Asja Jelic | ICTP | |
| Vincenzo Alba | University of Pisa | Before a war starts, intellectuals, artists, academics, they are the ones that foresee what is happening and they are the ones who suffer first |
| Sara Murciano | CNRS | |
| Pierpaolo Vivo | King's College London | This is an unprecedented attack to the core values and mission of one of the best schools of physics in the country. A University IS the lecturers, the students, and all the professional service people who work tirelessly to make the system work: an attack of this magnitude to the job security and livelihood of the very people who make up the fabric of a University is unconscionable and must be reversed. |
| Prof Sebastian Goldt | International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA), Trieste, Italy | The decision of the University to place 80% of its academic staff at risk of redundancy is appalling and needs to be reserved immediately -- culling a prestigious and internationally respected department like the Physics department in Nottingham would do great damage not just to the researchers involved, but to the reputation of the university as well. |
| Mari Carmen Banuls | Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics | |
| Prof Hugo Touchette | Stellenbosch University, South Africa | |
| Prof. Peter Sollich | Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Goettingen, Germany | |
| Nigel Wilding | University of Bristol | Nottingham Physics is an internationally recognised strength of the University. To cut it would be a grave mistake. |
| Professor John Chalker | Physics Department, Oxford University | |
| Dr. Kartik Rajan Neralwar | Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy | |
| Philippe Charpentier | CERN | |
| Morgan L. Thomas | Keio University | |
| Lukas Herron | University of Maryland | |
| Mitch Kelly | University of Victoria | |
| Deschamps Olivier | IN2P3 | |
| Dr. Daine L. Danielson | Harvard University & Massachusetts Institute of Technology | |
| Joydeep Chakravarty | McGill University | Just wondering whats their next brilliant idea to save some more bucks - maybe remove computers and go back to abacus? Absolutely lamentable decision. |
| Philip Yecko | The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art | |
| Prof Eran Palti | Ben-Gurion University of the Negev | |
| Geoff Parker | UCL | Reducing basic science capabilities weakens our society. Our future prosperity depends on innovation, and the true source of this is science and engineering departments at our universities. Whether training the next generation of innovators or changing the world through leading research, we cannot afford to water down this national strength at Universities such as Nottingham. |
| Jonathan Keeling | University of St Andrews | The University of Nottingham's Physics and Astronomy department has been among the key centres for Physics research in the UK, playing a crucial role in the development of MRI among many other contributions. It is appalling to see such drastic cuts proposed, which will destroy the reputation and capability of this department. The proposed student staff ratio reported in the THE and PhysicsWorld would be more double the average of UK Physics and Astronomy departments, and make the adequate teaching of Physics an impossibility. |
| Prof Ulrich Schneider | University of Cambridge | |
| Prof Andrew G Green | UCL | I am saddened to hear of this threat to one of our finest physics departments. Nottingham have phenomenal strength in both junior and senior faculty who have set the scientific agenda in multiple areas. I sincerely hope that an alternative strategy will be found to address current financial difficulties. It is by maintaining academic stature that the university will ultimately secure its future. |
| Maciej Lewenstein | ICFO | |
| Antonello Scardicchio | The Abdus Salam ICTP | The School of Physics and Astronomy in Nottingham has a glorious past and many distinguished colleagues are in its faculty right now. The decision of dismantling it cannot certainly be due to scientific reasons. It is most definitely wrong, and it will negatively affect the profile of the University and that of Physics in England. I sincerely hope the administrators will reconsider their decision. |
| Dieter Jaksch | University of Hamburg | |
| Prof Claudio Castelnovo | University of Cambridge | |
| Prof Richard Haley | Lancaster University | |
| Udo Seifert | University of Stuttgart | Over the last 15 years, the colleagues in Nottingham have built up an internationally leading group in non-equilibrium statistical physics. I cannot imagine why one would put such an achievement at risk. |
| Prof. Dr. Henning Moritz | University of Hamburg | |
| Michael Knap | Technical University of Munich | |
| Prof. Adolfo del Campo | University of Luxembourg | |
| Frank Pollmann | TUM | I sincerely hope that a better and less disruptive solution can be found. |
| Giovanni Di Meglio | Ulm University, Institute of Theoretical Physics | |
| Dr Pablo Arnalte-Mur | University of València (Spain) | |
| Giulio Bonelli | SISSA | |
| Selma | Institute of Physics, Ulm University | |
| Jamie Roberts | University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust | A disaster for the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Physics field at the centre of its creation - this should prevented |
| Rosario Fazio | ICTP | |
| Basudeb Dasgupta | Tata Institute of Fundamental Research | I sign this petition out of solidarity with my colleagues and a deep concern for the institution’s future. While the financial pressures facing higher education are real, addressing them through staff and faculty reductions is a short-sighted strategy that compromises its core mission. A university’s global reputation, research excellence, and student experience rely entirely on its human capital. Dismantling academic teams risks fracturing vital research pipelines, accelerating staff burnout, and ultimately diminishing the quality of education we offer. The long-term cost of rebuilding this institutional expertise far outweighs any immediate budgetary relief. I urge leadership to pause these proposals and work collaboratively with staff representatives to find transparent, alternative solutions that protect the workforce and secure Nottingham’s standing as a world-class institution. |
| Lorenzo Piroli | University of Bologna | |
| Giuseppe Santoro | International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste, Italy | |
| Billie Meadowcroft | University of Chicago | |
| Riley Mann | University of Cambridge | |
| Takeshi Kobayashi | SISSA | |
| Matteo Bertolini | SISSA | |
| Dr. Rohit Kondapally | Durham University | As a University of Nottingham Physics alumnus, the proposed cuts to staff is very sad to hear. The excellent teaching and supervision support that I received from staff within the Physics and Astronomy department played a key role in me pursuing a PhD; without them I would not have begun my academic career and I dread to think of the impact on current and next generation of students. These proposed cuts would cause irreparable harm to the ability of Nottingham to maintain a world-class teaching and research environment and to inspire the next-generation of scientists and innovators. |
| Ahsan Nazir | University of Manchester (Head of theoretical physics) | |
| Dominik Németh | University of Manchester | |
| Philip Taranto | University of Manchester | |
| Charlie Shakeshaft | University of Manchester | |
| Thomas Elliott | University of Manchester | |
| Dr Joel Terry | University of Glasgow | |
| Dr. Mohd Hafiz Mohd Saadon | Universiti Malaya | |
| Dr James Thorpe | Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust | |
| Francisco José Maldonado Torralba | University of Tartu | |
| Luis Eduardo Suelves | Tartu Observatory, University of Tartu | We need to protect research and find ways to fund it. |
| Shadab Alam | Tata Institute of Fundamental Research | This is a very sad situation, particularly given the departments role in frontier physics. I will urge the responsible administration to re-consider there reasoning carefully. |
| Prof Rastko Sknepnek | University of Dundee | |
| Prof. Di Cintio, Arianna | Instituto Astrofisica Canarias and ULL - Spain | |
| Susana Huelga | Ulm University | Strong support for our colleagues at Nottingham |
| Daniel Matoz Fernandez | Complutense University of Madrid | |
| Dr. Madhurima Deb | FIZ Karlsruhe Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure | |
| Titti Owman | Lund University Hospital, Sweden | |
| Tanmay Bhore | University of Leeds | |
| Carlo Baccigalupi | The International School for Advanced Studies | We are side by side defending the jobs of our colleagues and the prestigious Institution in Notthingham they represent. |
| Leonardo Banchi | University of Florence | |
| Prof. Laura Donnay | SISSA | |
| Dr Eemeli Tomberg | Université catholique de Louvain | |
| Angelo Rosa, Prof. | Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA), Trieste (Italy) | |
| Herfray Yannick | Institut Denis Poisson - Université de Tours | |
| Dr. Alex Cooper | University of Oxford | |
| Elena Carolo | INAF - Padova | |
| Piero Ullio | SISSA, Trieste | |
| James Blackwell | RCSI Bahrain | |
| Srinath Rajagopal | National Physical Laboratory | |
| Emma Harris | Institute of Cancer Research | |
| Andre Alvarenga | National Physical Laboratory - NPL, UK | |
| Dr Josh Lovell | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics | Another devastating proposed set of cuts in UK academia. UK government need to step in urgently and stop these here in Nottingham, and right across the country. |
| BALANA Arthur | Université de Bordeaux | |
| Prof. Francesco Benini | SISSA, International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste (Italy) | |
| Sophie Jewell | University of Oxford | |
| Prof. Vitaliano Ciulli | Università di Firenze | |
| Miles Blencowe | Dartmouth College | Colleagues from Nottingham School of Physics and Astronomy have had an essential impact on my career in theoretical physics, especially Prof. Andrew Armour; in collaboration with Prof. Keith Schwab at Caltech, we pioneered during the early 2000s some of the first proposals to demonstrate mechanical systems in the quantum regime--a highly active area of research today. I have also benefited from the work of Prof. Silke Weinfurtner, a world leader in the fluid simulations of analogue black hole event horizon physics. Jorma Louko is yet another colleague who my students and colleagues have interacted and consulted with, as one of the senior leaders within the field of relativistic quantum information physics. And I would like to acknowledge Prof. Tony Kent, who generously shared his time and acoustic phonon-2DEG scattering data, enabling my first foray into condensed matter physics back in the 90s. |
| Dr Ken Smith | University of Oxford | |
| Professor Daniel Thomas | University of Leeds | |
| Prof Stephen Lewis | The Open University | |
| Costis Papageorgakis | Queen Mary University of London | |
| marcello dalmonte | ICTP Trieste and University of Bologna | |
| prabesh bista | Stony Brook university | |
| Alessandro Lunghi | Trinity College Dublin | |
| Afif Omar | University of Victoria | |
| Hossein Sadeghpour | Institute for Theoretical Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics (ITAMP) - Harvard Univ. | One of the quickest way to straightjacket a country's economy is to turn away from supporting science. |
| Silvia Pappalardi | University of Cologne | |
| Martin Korzeczek | Ulm University | |
| Andrea Henderson de la Fuente | University of Oxford | |
| Prof. Dr. Christophe Grojean | DESY and Humboldt University | Education and research is the best long-term investment. The tech tycoons would not exist without the academic progress made over the last 100 years in our understanding of quantum mechanics. |
| Mridul Gupta | IIT Delhi, India | It's sad where the world is going. We had a short golden phase of science, and now there are fund cuts everywhere. I stand with you guys. |
| Nick Achilleos | UCL | |
| Theodoros Papadopoulos | University of Chester | If the University of Nottingham wants to generate income, it needs to support its academics in their work rather than undermine them. |
| Damian Tyler | University of Oxford | The decision to dismiss this large group of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Members at the University of Nottingham, through no fault of their own, is appalling and should be reversed immediately. |
| Dr. Jaclyn Jensen | Dartmouth College | |
| James Miley | ESO/ALMA | |
| Antonio García Hernández | University of Granada | |
| James McHugh | University of Manchester | |
| Gabriel Cuomo | SISSA (Trieste) | |
| Dr James Clewett | Warwick University | The physics department is a jewel in the crowd of Nottingham University. Endangering the future of the department in this way is shocking mismanagement, there must be other avenues to resolve whatever financial tensions have led to this moment. |
| Rachel Emrick | Princeton University | The physics breakthroughs of today become the medical, technological, and infrastructural innovations of tomorrow. In a cultural and economic environment that feels increasingly shortsighted regarding scientific investment, I believe we should be doing everything we can to protect institutional experience and knowledge. |
| Dr Philippa Cole | Queen Mary University of London | |
| Kyle Boschen | Optical Sciences Centre, Swinburne University of Technology | Many of the academics at risk of these cuts were significant inspirations for my love of physics, and my choice to persue a PhD in physics. The loss of these and similar academic positions is a global loss for the future of science. |
| Prof. Gustavo Yepes | Universidad Autonoma de Madrid | |
| Hsin-Hui Huang | Swinburne University of Technology | |
| Giovanni Pareschi | INAF - Brera Astronomical Observatory | |
| Benjamin Wilson | University of Manchester | |
| Guilherme Franzmann | Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics | |
| Dr Iosif Mendichovszky | Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust & University of Cambridge | As a Consultant Radiologist, I have seen firsthand the vital contribution that the University of Nottingham’s MRI research group at the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre (School of Physics and Astronomy) makes to UK healthcare. Their work directly drives the development and clinical translation of new MRI technologies that are ultimately used across the NHS to improve patient diagnosis and care. SPMIC has a central role in training the next generation of MRI physicists (clinical scientists) who are essential to the safe and effective operation of MRI services, the implementation of new imaging technologies, MRI safety governance, protocol optimisation, and innovation within the NHS. Without highly skilled MRI physicists, modern radiology services simply cannot function safely or progress technologically. The proposed loss of staff risks undermining an internationally recognised centre of excellence at a time when advanced imaging, AI integration, and precision diagnostics are becoming increasingly important to patient care. Protecting this department is not only important for world-leading research and education, but for the future quality and safety of NHS imaging services nationwide. |
| James Drummond | University of Southampton | |
| Andrew Williams | University of California San Diego | |
| Paul Fendley | University of Oxford | |
| Prof. Hal Tasaki | Gakushuin University (Tokyo, Japan) | |
| Manuel Piarulli | Laboratoire des 2 Infinis - Toulouse | |
| Dr William Coulton | University of Oxford | |
| Prakruti Sudarshan | Max Planck Institute for Astronomy | |
| Prof. Mordecai-Mark Mac Low, FAAS | American Museum of Natural History | |
| Aleksandr Azatov | SISSA | |
| Gemma Cheng | University of Hertfordshire | |
| Julian Muñoz | UT Austin | |
| Dr. Ramanshu P. Singh | Veer Bahadur Singh Purvanchal University, Jaunpur, India | |
| Andrea Cavagna | Institute for Complex Systems, Rome | |
| Ioana Zelko | University of Toronto | |
| Prof. David T Limmer | University of California, Berkeley | |
| Soko Matsumura | University of Dundee | |
| Bianca | King's College London | |
| Simon Hodgkin | Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge | |
| Vasileios Apostolopoulos | University of Crete | Academic sector needs stability |
| Dr. Stephan Eisenhardt | University of Edinburgh | |
| Aksel Ånestad | Cambridge CARES | |
| Prof. Leon Loveridge | University of South-Eastern Norway | |
| Dr Aprajita Verma | University of Oxford | |
| Markus Hellenbrand | University of Cambridge | |
| Claire Guimond | University of Oxford | |
| Ignacio Cirac | Max-Planck Institute of Quantum Optics. Wolf Prize 2013 | I fully support the document |
| Luqian Wang | Georgia State University | |
| Alessandro Silva | SISSA | |
| Fergal Callaghan | Kwantlen Polytechnic University | |
| Carlos Pérez-Espigares | University of Granada | |
| Veljko Vujcic | Astronomical Observatory Belgrade | |
| Ruben Sanchez-Janssen | Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes | |
| Dr Clare Wethers | The University of Manchester | |
| Joaquin Delgado | Mathematics Department Universidad Autonoma Meteopolitana Iztapalapa CDMX, MEX | |
| James Gillanders | University of Oxford | |
| Prof. Sheila Kannappan | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | |
| Pyry Runko | University of Jyväskylä | |
| Sylvia Ploeckinger | University of Vienna | |
| Dr. Gibwa Musoke | Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics | |
| Dr Marina Arnaudova | University of Edinburgh | |
| Izzy Garland | Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic | |
| Dr. Clara Pennock | University of Edinburgh | |
| Robert Pascalau | U. Cambridge | |
| Dr Calvin Preston | University of Cambridge | |
| Prof. Daisuke Kawata | University College London | |
| Prof. Edward Wilson-Ewing | University of New Brunswick | |
| Prof. Almudena Alonso Herrero | Centro de Astrobiología | |
| Dr Sophia Flury | University of Edinburgh | |
| Luca Zampieri | INAF-Astronomical Observatory of Padova | |
| Dr Oliver Neill | University of Glasgow | |
| Andrey Shkerin | Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics | |
| Markus Nilsson | Lund University | |
| Dr David J Turner | University of Maryland, Baltimore County; High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), NASA GSFC | |
| Dr Natalia Martsinovich | University of Sheffield | |
| Romina Petrucci | Observatorio Astronómico - Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Argentina) | |
| Jones Chilufya | University of Hertfordshire | |
| Joel Carpenter | University of Southampton | |
| Harrison Souchereau | Yale University | |
| Michael Herrmann | University of Edinburgh | |
| Piotr Tourkine | CNRS, USMB, Laboratoire d'Annecy de Physique théorique | |
| R P Nathan | UCL | |
| Fabian Maucher | TU Delft | |
| Gregoire Lacaille | University of Glasgow | |
| Hannah Gerbeth | German Cancer Reserach Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg | |
| Dr Giulia Lusetti | The Open University | |
| Prof. Stephan Huber | University of Sussex | |
| Lucy Joyce | University of Strathclyde | |
| Dr Richard Bowman | University of Glasgow | |
| Dr Heather Williams | The Christie NHS Foundation Trust | I studied Physics with Medical Physics at Nottingham and it gave me the foundation on which to build a career in the field - I am now a Consultant Medical Physicist specialising in positron emission tomography and leading one of the largest medical physics and engineering teams in the NHS, alongside lecturing at Manchester, Salford and Cumbria universities. I understand the university needs to save money, but cutting 20 staff from physics and astronomy is just stupid (sorry, there are no other words for it) and sending most of the department threatening letters - presumably in the hope the 20 will jump before they are pushed - is an appalling way to treat an exemplary team of scientists. I sincerely hope you reverse this decision, and other ill-informed staff cuts across the university, before you ruin Nottingham University's reputation and send it into a cycle of decline. |
| Dr Morag Casey | University of Glasgow | |
| David Langlois | APC, CNRS - Université Paris Cité |