Personal Chair, Head of School
- About
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- Office Address
- School/Department
- School of Natural and Computing Sciences
Biography
I joined the University of Aberdeen in September 2022 as the Head of School of Natural and Computing Sciences. I am a physicist by training having studied Laser Physics and Optoelectronics at St. Andrews, followed by a PhD in Atomic and Laser Physics, also at St. Andrews. I then briefly left academia to join the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (dstl) working on optical imaging technologies.
I returned to St. Andrews in 2002 as a postdoctoral research fellow working on cold atom physics before being awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2003 to work on holographic optical trapping and beam shaping.
In 2007 I joined the University of Dundee as a Lecturer, and held a variety of roles, including Head of Physics and Associate Dean Research in the School of Science and Engineering.
In 2018 I moved to Australia to take up a Chair and act as the Director, Research Programs in the Faculty of Engineering and IT at the University of Technology Sydney.
My research work focusses on applications of optics in areas such as optical trapping and microscopy. I am interested in making use of these tools in the biomedical science and in environmental sciences (especially in aerosol analysis). I dabble in areas such as THz beam shaping and microfluidics.
I have taught a range of courses throughout my career from first year to research postgraduate. I have been fortunate to teach across disciplinary boundaries, teaching to students taking degrees in topics such as product design to quantum computing.
Qualifications
- MSci (Hons) Laser Physics and Optoelectronics1997 - University of St. Andrews
- PhD Physics2001 - University of St. Andrews
External Memberships
- Member of the Institute of Physics (MInstP)
- Senior Member of the Optica
- Chartered Physicist (CPhys)
- Research
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Research Areas
Accepting PhDs
I am currently accepting PhDs in Physics.
Please get in touch if you would like to discuss your research ideas further.
Research Specialisms
- Photonics and Optical Physics
- Physics
- Physical Chemistry
- Biophysical Science
- Applied Physics
Our research specialisms are based on the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS) which is HESA open data, published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.
- Teaching
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Teaching Responsibilities
Currently my teaching consists of honours project supervision on the physics program, but am open to supervising projects from students in any subject area interested in experimental or computational optics and photonics, including biophotonics.
In 2023 I will be starting a new Optics 3rd year course, aimed at students studying physics.
- Publications
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Bessel beams: Diffraction in a new light
Contemporary Physics, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 15-28Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0010751042000275259
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Colloidal dynamics in the circularly symmetric optical potential of a Bessel beam
Contributions to Journals: Conference Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1117/12.614416
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Optical levitation in a Bessel light beam
Applied Physics Letters, vol. 85, no. 18, pp. 4001-4003Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1814820
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Imaging in optical micromanipulation using two-photon excitation
New Journal of Physics, vol. 6, pp. 1-8Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/6/1/136
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Micromanipulation with Bessel beams: Studies of angular momentum and reconstruction
Contributions to Journals: Conference Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1117/12.556319
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Optically bound arrays of microscopic particles in one dimension
Contributions to Journals: Conference Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1117/12.555663
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
The reconstruction of optical angular momentum after distortion in amplitude, phase and polarization
Journal of Optics A: Pure and Applied Optics, vol. 6, no. 5, pp. S235-S238Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1464-4258/6/5/016
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Optically bound microscopic particles in one dimension
Physical Review E - Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics, vol. 69, no. 2 1, pp. 021403-1-021403-6Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.69.021403
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Rectifying transport of a mixture of Brownian particles on an asymmetric periodic optical potential
Contributions to Journals: Conference Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1117/12.533746
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Optical trapping of three-dimensional structures using dynamic holograms
Optics Express, vol. 11, no. 26, pp. 3562-3567Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.11.003562
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Three-dimensional arrays of optical bottle beams
Optics Communications, vol. 225, no. 4-6, pp. 215-222Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.optcom.2003.07.032
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Observation of the Transfer of the Local Angular Momentum Density of a Multiringed Light Beam to an Optically Trapped Particle
Physical Review Letters, vol. 91, no. 9, 093602Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.093602
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Coherent effects in a driven Vee scheme
Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, vol. 36, no. 13, pp. 2861-2871Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/0953-4075/36/13/315
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Transient response of a cold atomic beam in the presence of a far-off resonance light guide
Journal of Modern Optics, vol. 50, no. 11, pp. 1751-1755Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09500340308235520
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Interfering Bessel beams for optical micromanipulation
Optics Letters, vol. 28, no. 8, pp. 657-659Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.28.000657
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Applications of spatial light modulators in atom optics
Optics Express, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 158-166Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.11.000158
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Advanced Micromanipulation using Non-diffracting Beams
Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Conference Proceedings- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Advanced micromanipulation using Bessel beams
Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Conference Proceedings- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/CLEOE.2003.1313778
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Observation of the simultaneous transfer of the spin and orbital angular momentum of light to an optically trapped particle
Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Conference Proceedings- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Guiding a cold atomic beam along a co-propagating and oblique hollow light guide
Optics Communications, vol. 214, no. 1-6, pp. 247-254Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0030-4018(02)02130-2
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Simultaneous micromanipulation in multiple planes using a self-reconstructing light beam
Nature, vol. 419, no. 6903, pp. 145-147Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01007
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Electromagnetically induced transparency in N-level cascade schemes
Optics Communications, vol. 190, no. 1-6, pp. 221-229Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0030-4018(01)01053-7
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Polarization effects in electromagnetically induced transparency
Physical Review A - Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 62, no. 5, pp. 53802-53801Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.62.053802
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Simple theory of microwave induced transparency in atomic and molecular systems
Journal of Modern Optics, vol. 47, no. 11, pp. 1887-1897Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09500340008232441
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Extended mode-hop-free tuning by use of a dual-cavity, pump-enhanced optical parametric oscillator
Optics Letters, vol. 25, no. 5, pp. 341-343Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.25.000341
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus