Personal Biography
I took my BA and PhD at Cambridge University before heading west to a post-doctoral position at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. I was tempted back to Cambridge by a Research Fellowship at Magdalene College, and shortly afterwards was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship. I transferred this fellowship to the University of Birmingham for two years, but in 2000 I decided to try something outside academia by getting involved in a start-up company in Seattle. In 2004, I realised that I was starting to miss teaching so decided to return to academia, first to a lectureship at Trinity College Dublin, and two years later to my current position as Tutor for Materials Science at Corpus and Professor of Materials in the Department of Materials Science. I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2020. When not looking at small things in an electron microscope, or teaching about small things, I like to be found on the tops of mountains, or at least struggling my way up with my family. I am extremely relieved that Oxford is a bit more hilly than Cambridge.
Research and Teaching
I work with some of the most powerful electron microscopes in the world, developing new techniques for the atomic resolution characterisation of materials. In particular I am interested in taking advantage of the revolutionary changes to the field presented by the development of spherical aberration correctors. These are like spectacles for a microscope, and allow even smaller things to be seen. I collaborate with a number of groups worldwide, and sit on a number of committees and boards. In 2007 I was awarded the Burton Medal by the Microscopy Society of America for my contribution to the field. In 2009 I won a University of Oxford Teaching Award. I won the 2013 Ernst Ruska Prize for Electron Microscopy and the 2015 and 2020 European Microscopy Society Best Paper Awards in Materials Science were awarded for work done in my research group.
Teaching Materials Science is wonderfully varied, and in one day my teaching activities can range, for example, from detailed mathematics and the theory of bonding in solids to a discussion what happens when a piece of metal is extruded. Oxford also offers the opportunity to use a wide variety of teaching methods. Small group tutorial teaching allows really detailed discussion with students about a specific piece of science, whereas lectures allow me to rant on enthusiastically about something I find interesting, and perhaps perform a demonstration. My teaching areas generally focus on the characterisation of materials and the properties of materials, and these areas reflect my general interest in understanding how detailed atomic structure can control macroscopic properties.
Publications and online resources
A full list of publications and further details of my research activity can be found at my research group website: