MPhil - Course Lecturers
Cate Ducati
Dr Caterina Ducati is a Lecturer in the Electron Microscopy Group in the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy. Cate started working with nanoscale materials during her undergraduate degree in Physics (Milan, Italy), and has devoted her career to the study of finite size structures using electron microscopy techniques. Cate received a PhD degree in Engineering from Cambridge, held a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship between 2004 and 2007, and is currently a Royal Society University Research Fellow. Her main research interest is the study of metal oxide nanostructures for photocatalytic and photovoltaic applications, and in particular for hybrid solar cells. Cate is also working on the nucleation and growth of carbon nanotubes and semiconductor nanowires. Her research has been published in over 80 articles. Cate is a fellow of Churchill College.
Rachel Oliver
Dr Rachel Oliver is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and a University Lecturer. As part of the Cambridge GaN centre, her research focuses on the characterisation and exploitation of nanoscale structures in GaN-based materials. The broad aim of her work is to achieve improved performance in GaN-based optoelectronic devices and to develop and implement novel device concepts.
Zoe Barber
Dr Zoe Barber is a Reader in the Materials Science Department, and a member of the Device Materials Group. Her research interests are based around thin film deposition techniques, and the control of the deposition environment in order to control film structure and properties. Current projects include superconducting photon detectors, thin film shape memory alloys, the study of coatings and structures for fuel cell catalysts, photovoltaics, and biomedical implants, and heterostructure deposition for spintronics applications.
Jeremy Baumberg
Prof. Baumberg is the Director of the NanoDTC. He also leads the NanoPhotonics Portfolio Centre at the University of Cambridge. For the past 10 years he directed NanoTechnology at the University of Southampton and was awarded the 2004 Royal Society Mullard Prize, the 2004 Mott Lectureship of the Institute of Physics as well as the Charles Vernon Boys medal in 2000. His research interests are very broad, previously spanning magnetic semiconductors and single semiconductor quantum dots to nanofludics and surface chemistry and he acts as an interdisciplinary champion of wider Nano collaborations. Significant industrial experience at Hitachi, as an IBM Fellow, and recently with a spin-off, Mesophotonics, allow him to combine fundamental new science with potential applications, for instance in screening applications within healthcare. He also frequently talks on NanoScience to the media, and is a strategic advisor to the UK Research Councils
Mark Blamire
Professor Mark Blamire leads the Device Materials Group in the Department of Materials Science. His research is built around the deposition, microfabrication and measurement of thin film heterostructure devices. In particular the application of novel materials and advanced nanofabrication to create new types of functional device. His research spans a number of areas of current interest and includes studies of metals, oxides and nitrides; superconductors, ferromagnets and ferroelectrics, and device nanofabrication. Mark Blamire received both his first degree in Physics and PhD from the University of Cambridge. He has published over 250 research articles and is a frequent speaker at international research conferences.. Professor Blamire teaches a number of undergraduate courses and supervises six PhD students.
Stuart Clarke
Dr Stuart Clarke is a Senior University Lecturer in The Department of Chemistry and at The BP Institute in Cambridge. His research centres on applying novel scattering techniques to the study of colloidal and interfacial problems. His background is in Chemistry studied at Oxford before he came to the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge (1993) and then to the Department of Chemistry in Cambridge (2000). His work focuses on novel experimental methods for the study of colloid, polymer and interface science particularly molecular layers absorbed from liquids and solutions to solid surfaces and the microstructure of complex fluids.
EA (Ted) Davis
Professor Edward A Davis was an undergraduate in the Physics Department at Birmingham University and a postgraduate at Reading University. In the 1960s he spent seven years in the USA, first as a post-doc at the University of Illinois and then as a scientist at the Xerox Corporation. He returned to the UK to a position in the Cavendish Laboratory where he worked and co-authored a book with Professor Sir Nevill Mott on Electronic Processes in Non-crystalline Materials. He held a Royal Society John Jaffé Fellowship Award before being appointed a lecturer in the Department of Physics and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College.
In 1980 Professor Davis was offered a Chair of Physics at the University of Leicester where he remained until his official retirement, although he still lectures there to undergraduates in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He now holds the position of Distinguished Research Fellow in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge. He is currently Coordinating Editor and Letters Editor of Philosophical Magazine – a condensed matter physics and materials science journal first published in 1798.
Robert Doubleday
Dr Robert Doubleday is a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge. His research interests include the governance of science and technology, scientific advice in policy making, and societal dimensions of nanotechnology. Previously he spent a year as a Policy Fellow at the UK Government Office for Science; two years as a "lab-based social scientist" at the Nanoscience Centre, University of Cambridge; and one year as a Fulbright Scholar at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Robert has a BSc in Chemistry, an MSc in Science & Technology Policy and PhD in Geography ( on public controversy over GM foods)
Judith Louise (MacManus-)Driscoll
Judith received her B.A. from Imperial College, London in 1987 and Ph.D. at University of Cambridge in 1991. She was an IBM Post-doctoral Fellow at Stanford University and IBM Almaden from 1991-1995. She then became a Governer's Lecturer and then Reader at Imperial College until 2003. She has been a Long Term visiting staff member at Los Alamos National Lab since 2003. In late 2003, she joined the University of Cambridge where she is now a Full Professor in Materials Science. She works on the materials science defect chemistry-property relations of functional oxide thin films and nanostructures. She is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and also a Fellow of the Institute of Physics.
Erika Eiser
Dr. Erika Eiser is a University Lecturer at the Cavendish Laboratory, Research Group - Biological and Soft Systems. Her research interests focus on several self-assembling and colloidal systems, in particular, those occurring in biological and soft systems like foods that are fun. For instance, we use the highly specific binding between single stranded short DNA strands to glue colloids together to create new photonic crystals, and colloidal molecules that may be useful for technological applications but also for bio-sensing. The two other projects she is involved in are studying self-assembling and catalysis of metal-nanoclusters embedded in highly organized self-assembling matrixes, and the structure of sheared clay suspensions such as quicksand or gels used in cosmetics. The experimental tools she uses are various microscopy methods, classical and micro-rheology, as well as small 7 angle x-ray and light scattering. Because of her interest in clay-suspension she is also associated with the BP Institute
Andrew Flewitt
Dr Andrew Flewitt is Reader in Electronic Engineering in Cambridge University Engineering Department and is a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College. He is a member of the Electronic Devices and Materials Group and his research interests include silicon-based and metal oxide-based materials deposited at low temperatures over large areas, silicon nanowires, and novel materials and processes for producing MEMS devices, with particular reference to the integration of polymers in devices.
Chris Ford
Dr Ford is a Reader in Quantum Electronics and an experimentalist in the Semiconductor Physics Group at the Cavendish Laboratory. He works on the following topics, among others: quantum computing with moving single-electron quantum dots carried by Surface Acoustic Waves (SAWs); Luttinger liquids and other interaction effects in quantum wires; spin-related interactions, Coulomb Blockade and the Kondo effect in single antidots in the quantum Hall regime, and transport through individual nanocrystals and molecules. He is a fellow of Girton College.
Krzysztof Koziol
Dr Krzysztof Koziol is a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy. He received his first degree in Chemistry, M.Sc. in Polymer Chemistry and Ph.D. in Materials Science. His current research involves exploration of the synthesis and applications of substrate-bound carbon nanotube arrays and gas-phase-grown carbon nanotube fibres. His major focus is to understand the chemistry during the nanotube synthesis in order to achieve chirality control of nanotubes. His other research activity is in multi-functional electrical, mechanical and thermal properties of carbon nanotube fibres, strong candidates as high-performance new generation materials for advanced terrestrial and aerospace technologies.
James Loudon
Dr. James Loudon is a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy and a fellow of Homerton College. He is a member of the High Resolution Electron Microscopy Group and his research interests are in imaging flux vortices in superconductors, magnetic phase transformations and charge density waves.
Carsten Schwandt
Dr Carsten Schwandt graduated with a Diploma in Chemistry from the Technical University of Braunschweig, and he earned a Doctorate in Natural Sciences at the Max-Planck-Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart. He held scholarships from the German Ministry of Research and Technology and from the European Commission. Carsten is currently a Senior Research Fellow in the Materials Chemistry Group of the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge. Most of his work is located in the areas of molten salt electrochemistry and solid state electro- chemistry, with a focus on extractive metallurgy, materials synthesis, process development, and sensors. Carsten has considerable experience in technology transfer. He is involved in various commercialisation efforts, and he is an Advisor and Consultant to several spin-out companies. Carsten teaches in the fields of chemical thermodynamics, electrochemistry and materials chemistry.
Ashwin Seshia
Dr Ashwin Seshia is a Lecturer in MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) in the Cambridge University Engineering Department, a Fellow of Queens’ College and a member of the Micromechanics and Nanoscience research groups in the Engineering Department. He obtained a B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, in 1996, an M.S. from UC Berkeley, in 1999, and was awarded a Ph.D. by UC Berkeley, in 2002. His research interests include integrated micromechanical resonant structures for sensor and timing applications, micromachined devices for in-vivo monitoring, biological sensor systems and MEMS Design. He has contributed to the development of micromechanical inertial sensors, micromechanical resonator oscillators and capillary electrophoresis chips. He is a member of the IEEE.
Mary Vickers
Mary Vickers worked in industrial X-ray research labs for many years before coming to Cambridge. She is interested in structure property relationships. She has a wide range of expertise in X-ray scattering from SAXS, though powder diffraction, texture and reflectivity to high resolution work on single crystal materials. Recent work includes SAXS to measure pores in wet cellulose fibres, characteristion of GaN type materials and perovskite pillars and thin films as well as trying to help many people in the X-ray lab studying polymers, ceramics, metals, thin films, nanowires etc.