About
I am a Professor at the University and the Head of the Condensed Matter Physics group. I received a BSc degree from the University of Leeds (1986) and PhD from the University of Edinburgh (1989). I then spent 7 years as a Staff Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California before moving to the University of Liverpool in 1997.
My research experience is in condensed matter physics and surface physics and chemistry, focusing on the use of scattering techniques to study surface, interface and thin film atomic structure. My research has covered a wide range of material systems, from semiconductor surfaces prepared under ideal ultra-high vacuum (UHV) conditions to, more recently, metal and oxide surfaces in the electrochemical environment. I am a dedicated user of synchrotron radiation and neutron facililies and have been the principal investigator on programs at the SRS, Daresbury, ISIS and Diamond Light Source at RAL, ESRF and the ILL in Grenoble, France, the SLS in Switzerland and the APS, Argonne, NSLS, Brookhaven, US SSRL, Stanford, in the US. Since January 2000, I have been the Director of the XMaS beamline (UK-CRG) based at the ESRF. Since 2018 XMaS has been an EPSRC National Research Facility.
Funded Fellowships
- Advanced Research Fellowship (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), 1999)