To support activities of the interdisciplinary Cambridge NanoForum, a yearly competition is held to appoint a number of NanoForum Research Fellows. We were looking for talented postdoctoral and research fellows willing to help organise cross-departmental brainstorming workshops in a number of targeted Nano areas over the next two years. In return the successful Fellows won up to £3,500 conference travel support for meetings outside their direct area to help broaden their interdisciplinary interests, and also gain wider exposure across the University. They form part of close team helping to deliver interconnectivity that stimulates adventurous and grand challenge research.

NanoForum Fellows 2013-14:

 

Daniel Credgington

Affiliations: Department of Physics
Email: djnc3 [@] cam.ac.uk
Group Website: www.oe.phy.cam.ac.uk
Dan received his PhD from UCL, where he worked on nano-scale patterning and characterisation of conjugated organic molecules. He subsequently joined Imperial College London as a post-doc working on methods to measure the impact of recombination on the performance of organic solar cells, and the link between morphology and device function. In 2012, he joined the Cavendish Optoelectronics group under Prof Sir Richard Friend, in collaboration with the commercial LED developer CDT. He is currently a Royal Society University Research Fellow whose research focuses on understanding the behaviour of excitons within modern organic LEDs and how they can be controlled. Within the wider Optoelectronic group his interests encompass organic and hybrid heterojunction solar cells and new electrode materials for organic devices, and he is the Energy Materials theme coordinator for the NanoDTC.

Silvia Hernandez-Ainsa

Affiliations: Department of Physics
Email: smh80 [@] cam.ac.uk
Group Website: www.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/~ufk20/
Silvia Hernandez-Ainsa received her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Zaragoza (Spain) in February 2011. Her PhD thesis was on the area of ionic liquid crystalline dendrimers for applications in biomedicine and information handling technology. In March 2011 she joined the group of Dr. Keyser at the Department of Physics, University of Cambridge (UK), as a research associate working on nanopore technology for single molecule detection. Since February 2014, she is a Herchel Smith Research Fellow at the Department of Physics. Her current research involves the development of new nanopores based on DNA origami structures for several applications in bionanotechnology.
 

Katherine Orchard

Affiliations: Department of Chemistry; Advanced Institute for Materials Research (AIMR), Tohoku University (Japan)
Email: klo24 [@] cam.ac.uk
Group Website: www-reisner.ch.cam.ac.uk/index.html
Katherine received her PhD from Imperial College London, where she worked on the chemical synthesis of zinc oxide nanoparticles and their incorporation as fillers for polymer-inorganic nanocomposites. After her doctoral studies she joined Nanoco Technologies plc (Manchester, UK) as a research chemist, developing fluorescent cadmium-free quantum dots for display technologies. In 2012, she joined Dr Erwin Reisner’s group as a joint research associate between the University of Cambridge and the Advanced Institute for Materials Research (AIMR), Tohoku University, Japan. Her research centres on the development of nanostructured hybrid catalysts for solar driven water splitting, with particular focus on novel photoactive semiconductor nanomaterials, and their integration into electrochemical devices.

NanoForum Fellows 2012:

John Griffin

Affiliations: Department of Chemistry
Email: jg670 [@] cam.ac.uk
Group Website: www-grey.ch.cam.ac.uk
John is currently working on a project aimed to gain an insight into nanoscale processes by NMR spectroscopy.
 

Andrew Morris

Affiliations: Department of Physics, Winton Programme
Email: ajm255 [@] cam.ac.uk
Website: www.winton.phy.cam.ac.uk/directory/ajm255@cam.ac.uk
Andrew is a computational physicist working in theoretical materials discovery, interested in modelling energy materials such as Li-ion batteries and nuclear-waste encapsulation ceramics. Andrew uses global search techniques such as ab initio random structure searching (AIRSS) to predict the ground-state structure of materials. “Trial and error” plays a large part in the discovery of new materials. From the initial idea, the material must be synthesised and categorised before it can tested which is slow, difficult and expensive. High-throughput computation accelerates this process by suggesting then screening new materials, allowing us to ask “what if?” without the time and expense of manufacturing and categorizing samples. He models Li-ion batteries at the atomic level and try to uncover new materials to increase their capacity.

Christine K. Schmidt

Affiliations: Department of Biochemistry, Gurdon Institute
Email: cs681 [@] cam.ac.uk
Group Website: www.gurdon.cam.ac.uk/~jacksonlab
Christine K Schmidt did her postdoctoral research at the Gurdon Institute (University of Cambridge) in Prof. Steve Jackson’s laboratory during the Fellowship. In collaboration with Prof. O. G. Schmidt, Dr. S. Sanchez Ordonez and Dr. W. Xi (Institute for Integrative Nanosciences, Dresden), she established rolled-up nanomembranes as a 3D cell culturing system to investigate how spatial confinement contributes to chromosomal instability and how these findings could be employed for future cancer therapeutics. She received a PhD in Biochemistry (2009) from Cancer Research UK in London, studying chromosome segregation in the fission yeast Schizosaccharamyces pombe. During her first postdoctoral position at the National Cancer Institute (NIH, US) in Dr. Tom Misteli’s group she worked on combining high-throughput siRNA screening methodologies with automated high-content microscopic analyses. Christine is now a BBSRC David Phillips Fellow at the University of Manchester.

 

NanoForum Fellows 2011:

Juan Francisco Abenza Martinez

Affiliations: Department of Genetics, Gurdon Institute
Email: jfa27 [@] cam.ac.uk
Group Website: http://www.gurdon.cam.ac.uk/carazosalas.html
Juan Francisco Abenza graduated with a degree in Biological Sciences from University of Murcia (Spain), within the program of “Biotechnology and Biomedicine”. He completed a PhD at Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas-CSIC in Madrid. His studies, under the supervision of the Professor Miguel Ángel Peñalva, were focused on the role that Rab GTPases have in the identity and dynamics of intracellular membranes, using the model Aspergillus nidulans. Currently, he is carrying out a postdoctoral project investigating the influence of mechanics in fission yeast growth pattern in the group of Dr. Rafael Carazo Salas, at the Gurdon Institute (University of Cambridge).

Alex Finnemore

Affiliations: Department of Physics, University of Cambridge
Email: af395 [@] cam.ac.uk
Website: http://www.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/steiner/index.php?pid=61&wh=1680×1050
Dr Alex Finnemore completed his PhD in Physics at Cambridge in 2011. He is currently a research associate in the BSS group, working on routes to making colour from structure on the nanoscale. Alex completed his undergraduate studies at Stellenbosch and Cape Town Universities, in South Africa. Alex’s research has focused on understanding and replicating the nanostructures found in mineralised biological systems. This leads to materials with novel mechanical and optical properties. The prime example of this was replicating the structure of Mother-of-Pearl, yielding an iridescent thin film composed of bricks of calcium carbonate in an organic matrix.

Sarah Lubik

Affiliations: Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), University of Cambridge; Centre for Strategy and Performance, Centre for Technology Management
Email: sjl69 [@] cam.ac.uk

Website: http://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/people/sjl69/

Dr Sarah Lubik is a research associate in the Centre for Strategy and Performance at the University of Cambridge. Her research interests include marketing, partnerships and strategic development in high-tech start-up companies, with a particular interest in advanced materials ventures, and the development of innovation ecosystems. Sarah is also a certified business coach, marketing director of a small start-up company and has managed and coordinated European projects aimed at assisting entrepreneurship across Europe. She holds an MPhil and a PhD from the University of Cambridge and a Bachelor’s of Business Administration (hons) in International Business and Marketing from Simon Fraser University.

Tawfique Hasan

Affiliations: Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge and King’s College, Cambridge
Email: th270 [@] cam.ac.uk
Website: www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/nms/people/th270.html
Dr Tawfique Hasan completed his PhD from University of Cambridge. His earlier works include nanotube liquid dispersions,  their spectroscopic characterizations and polymer composites for photonic applications. In addition to ultrafast pulse generation from nanotubes,  he demonstrated charge transfer in nanotube bundles through systematic identification of excitonic energy transfer fingerprints in photoluminescence excitation maps. In 2009,  he was the first to demonstrate Graphene as a saturable absorber to generate ultrafast laser pulse. Dr Hasan was elected a Research Fellow in Engineering at King’s College,  Cambridge in 2009. He was recently awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship for 5 years on ‘Fully flexible graphene-based transparent conductors’. He recently demonstrated inkjet printing of solution-processed graphene for high performance printed devices,  opening the way for wearable electronics on a variety of substrates. Dr Hasan specializes in solution processed 1,  2D nanomaterials and their up-scalable engineering applications including ultrafast photonics,  inkjet printing and transparent conductors for flexible,  electrically switchable smart windows and location specific haptic feedback surfaces for next generation touch screens.