IOP and Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell launch new fund to encourage greater diversity in physics

The Institute of Physics and leading physicist Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell will today (Tuesday 19 March) launch a new PhD scholarship fund to encourage greater diversity in physics.

Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell has generously chosen to donate her £2.3m Breakthrough Prize to the Institute of Physics to support full or part-time graduates who wish to study PhD physics and are from groups that are currently under-represented in physics. The fund will be administered and managed by the IOP and supported by a panel that will review qualifying applicants and select those to be funded. 

BITC welcomes Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s Graduate Scholarship Fund. 

Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell should be commended for generously establishing this graduate scholarship fund. 

The evidence is well known that many Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students who study STEM subjects do not necessarily enter STEM careers. 

It is exciting to see practical leadership like this in action.  I would like to see more examples of this kind of leadership from the education sector and encourage those employers who have not already done so to sign up to the Race at Work Charter launched in October last year which encourages senior leaders to take action to support the progression of ethnic minority people in the workplace, of which this is a shining, practical example.”

Sandra Kerr OBE, Race Equalities Director at Business in the Community

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