I’m really interested by structure – composition – property relationships in materials. My group and I design and synthesise new functional materials and investigate their structure and properties. We’re interested in oxides (including perovskite-related materials), oxysulfides and oxyselenides, and oxyfluorides. These materials have useful magnetic, electronic and optical properties. 

I joined Durham Physics as Assistant Professor in Condensed Matter Physics in January 2021. My interest in materials physics/solid state chemistry began during my undergraduate studies and postgraduate research at University of Birmingham with Professor Colin Greaves. I then carried out postdoctoral research with Professor Tony West (Sheffield) and Professor John S. O. Evans (Durham Chemistry). I was appointed as lecturer and then senior lecturer in chemistry at University of Kent, before moving back to Durham. I’m really grateful to Max Alexander for use of the photo above, taken as part of the Illuminating Atoms exhibition for the International Year of Crystallography.

McCabe Group Website

Andrew is a Professor of Materials Chemistry at the University of Oxford. His primary research interests are in the dual roles of disorder and flexibility in functional materials - from metal–organic frameworks to frustrated magnets.

Born in Australia, Andrew studied at the Universities of Sydney, where he was supervised by Cameron Kepert, and Cambridge, where he was supervised by Martin Dove. He remained at Cambridge as a Junior Research Fellow in Materials Science at Trinity College.  During that time he worked closely with Martin, Matt Tucker, and Dave Keen on the application of reverse Monte Carlo methods to the problem of interpreting total scattering data. He also collaborated with Tony Cheetham, who became a strong influence on his later work. Andrew moved to Oxford in 2009 to establish his independent research group.

Goodwin Group website

Since 2016, Fabio covers the role of instrument scientist on the WISH diffractometer at ISIS supporting the cutting edge user program dealing with neutron diffraction on powder, single crystal and thin film samples also under extreme conditions (high-magnetic field and ultra-low temperature).

Fabio obtained his Ph.D. in Science and Technology of Innovative Materials from the Università Degli Studi di Parma, studying the polar and spin orderings in lead based double perovskites. Fabio research interests are focus on the correlation between materials properties, crystal structure and symmetry in complex multifunctional magnetic materials and quantum materials, in particular exploiting the use of magnetic symmetry extended to the superspace formalism. His principal research skills are related to diffraction techniques and symmetry analysis using group theory.

Roger Johnson is a lecturer in scattering techniques applied to condensed matter physics at University College London. He previously held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in the Department of Physics, University of Oxford following a PDRA studying new concepts in multiferroics and magnetoelectrics (Radaelli group, Oxford) and a PhD in resonant x-ray scattering from crystalline rare-earth compounds (Hatton group, University of Durham). Roger’s current research interests are in the physical crystallography of inorganic oxides, halides, and hybrid organic-inorganic quantum materials. He solves crystal and magnetic structures by multiple diffraction-based methods at large-scale synchrotron x-ray and neutron central facilities, and measures physical properties using laboratory-based material characterisation techniques. The relationships between structure and property are then understood using symmetry analysis by group, representation and Landau theories.

Alex’s main interest is in the study of structure-property relationships in new functional and quantum materials. After her undergraduate studies in Physics and Chemistry, she completed her PhD in 2013 at the University of St Andrews under the supervision of Prof. P. Lightfoot and Prof. A. P. Mackenzie. This focused on the interplay of symmetry modes and physical properties in multiferroics and the fermiology of quantum materials. She pursued these interests further during her postdoctoral work with Prof. H. Takagi (The University of Tokyo / RIKEN / Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research) on novel low-dimensional magnets and strongly spin-orbit coupled materials. From 2016 she was based at the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, moving in 2020 to the University of St Andrews with an EPSRC Early Career Fellowship. Her research combines high-resolution neutron diffraction with targeted synthesis and physical property measurements to unveil structural drivers in e.g. ferroelectrics and quantum magnets.

Gibbs Group Website