Teaching
I have tutored Materials Science undergraduates at St Catherine’s as a College Lecturer and now a College Fellow for over 10 years. I mainly teach topics relating to electronic properties of materials and phase transformations. In the Department of Materials I currently lecture the first year “Electricity and Magnetism” course and a third year options course on “Superconducting Materials” as well as running an annual workshop on tutorial teaching.
About me
I first came to the University of Oxford as an undergraduate student in Materials Science, staying on to gain a DPhil in the field of high temperature superconducting materials. I was awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship in 2005 which I undertook part time in the Department of Materials until I took up a permanent academic post in 2015. I lead a research group specialising in superconducting materials and co-direct the Centre for Applied Superconductivity which was established in 2015 (www.cfas.ox.ac.uk).
Research
My research group specialises in understanding relationships between processing, microstructure and properties in a wide range of technological superconducting materials. We have recently obtained Local Enterprise Partnership funding for a new Oxford Centre for Applied Superconductivity, with labs in both the Materials and Physics Departments, for carrying out pre-competitive research with local industrial partners including Siemens Magnet Technology, Oxford Instruments, Tokamak Energy and Element Six. In addition to my interests in applied superconductivity, I also work on understanding the fundamental properties of novel superconductors, such as Fe-pnictides and chalcogenides, using advanced analytical electron microscopy and synchrotron-based photoemission microscopy techniques to study the local chemical, structural and electromagnetic properties of these complex materials.
Graduate teaching
I supervise graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, mainly in the area of applied superconductivity.