Education
- Ph.D. Physics, University of York, UK, 2003
- MPhys Theoretical Physics with First Class Honours, University of York, UK, 2000
Research Experience
- Postdoctoral Scholar, University of California, Santa Barbara, July 2006-Present
- Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, October 2003-June 2006
Teaching Experience
- Mentoring junior graduate students and international exchange summer research students
- Classroom teaching as the primary instructor in tutorial classes for beginning undergraduate students in elecromagnetism and atomic physics
- Teaching assistant in undergraduate computational physics laboratory
Summary of Interests
- Condensed Matter Theory
- Electronic Structure Theory
- Computational ab initio many-body theory for real materials
- Correlated electron systems and the GW approximation
- Quantum Monte Carlo simulations
Research History
From July 2006 I joined the groups of Nicola Spaldin and Chris G. Van de Walle as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Since then, I have been working on applying first principles methods, including density functional theory, many-body perturbation theory and Monte Carlo methods, to study problems of interest in functional materials, including describing the non-radiative loss mechanisms in nitride-based light emitters, designing magnetoelectric materials and studying the electronic structure of rare-earth pnictides and their composites.
Between October 2003 and June 2006 I was a postdoctoral research associate in the groups of David Ceperley and Richard Martin at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, working with applying sophisticated quantum Monte Carlo methods to the high-pressure phase behavior of pure hydrogen.
Prior to October 2003 I studied for my PhD in the Condensed Matter Physics group at the University of York in the United Kingdom, under the supervision of Prof. Rex Godby.
For my thesis I was interested in the application of the GW approximation to computing accurate ground state total energies of electronic systems. I also studied the validity of the pseudopotential approximation in GW calculations, and theoretical methods for computing the bandwidth of metallic systems.
The abstract to my PhD thesis can be downloaded in postscript or PDF format. To request an electronic copy of the full thesis, please email me.