PhD student Alexia Lopez’s research has been shortlisted for a prestigious Times Higher Education (THE) award – in recognition of challenging what we understand about the universe.
PhD student Alexia Lopez is up against five other universities in the Research Project of the Year: STEM category, for her exciting cosmological discoveries over the last few years.
Dubbed “the Oscars of higher education”, the awards received a record-breaking number of entries in 2024, surpassing 700 and beating last year’s record by almost 100.
Her discovery of an ultra-large-scale structure in the Universe, The Giant Arc, in 2021, followed by the Big Ring in the Sky in 2024, were so significant that they challenged fundamental assumptions in the field of cosmology.
Alexia presented the Giant Arc at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in 2022 and presented the Big Ring at a further meeting of the AAS in 2024. In both cases, Alexia was invited by the AAS to present at press conferences and both discoveries were widely covered by the media.
“I am completely taken by surprise” Alexia said. “It is truly an honour to be shortlisted for this award and I am delighted that the Giant Arc and the Big Ring have drawn such an interest, both from the public and academic community.”
To date, the Big Ring in the Sky research has a reach of over one billion people around the world, with more than 1,000 different media outlets running the story.
Alexia was invited to speak at the prestigious Royal Society meeting: Challenging the Standard Cosmological Model. It is generally unheard of for a PhD student to present at an event like this; however, such was the impact of Alexia’s work, she joined world-leading cosmologists and a Nobel prize winner at the Royal Society to discuss the major challenges to the standard model of cosmology.
Alexia added: “It is a privilege to work towards answering the questions: what does our Universe look like and how did our Universe form? Studying the Universe on the largest scales imaginable is exhilarating; finding the Giant Arc and Big Ring structures are reminders that we still do not have all the answers about our Universe, and that there is so much left to learn!
“To have this work recognised by the prestigious THE awards is an honour, and I am just so grateful to have even come this far in being shortlisted.”
Some 120 finalists from more than 70 institutions have been shortlisted for the 20th anniversary edition of the Times Higher Education Awards.
Congratulations to Alexia! We look forward to finding out if her research wins at the THE awards ceremony in Birmingham on 28 November.
Figure: The Big Ring cosmological structure