Professor Rik Drummond-Brydson

Profile

Awards

• American Ceramic Society's Brunauer Award 1993
• UK Institute of Materials Minerals and Mining Pfeil Award 2009

Appointments held

• Physics, Imperial College and Materials, Oxford; Royal Society Research Fellow   1988 - 1992
• Visiting positions at MPI FHI Berlin and MPI Stuttgart  1986 - 1994
• Materials, Surrey Universit; Lecturer in Microstructural Science 1992 - 1995

Materials/ Chemical Engineering, Leeds University:    

• University Research Fellow 1996 - 2000
• Reader in Analytical Electron Microscopy 2000 - 2005
• Professor of Nanomaterials Characterisation 2005 -
• Co-director, Centre for Molecular Nanoscience in School of Chemistry 2010 - 2014
• Co-Director of MSc Nanofolio programmes 2010 - 2015
• Member of School of Chemical Engineering Executive Management Board 2015 –
• Director of Research and Innovation in School of Chemical and Process Engineering 2017 –

Selection of Professional body leadership roles

• EPSRC Equipment Panel Member, CDT Panel Member, General Panel Member 2010 -
• Founder Member and current Consortium Chair of SuperSTEM Facility 2001 -
• EPSRC National Centre for Electron Spectroscopy (NCESS) XPS facility 2006 - 2011
• Member of Executive Board of the European Microscopy Society 2004 - 2016
• Member of Council of the Royal Microscopical Society 2000 - 2003, 2012 -
• Royal Microscopical Society Honorary Secretary Physical Sciences 2012 -
• Scientific Organiser RMS Microscience Microscopy Congresses 2014 and 2015  
• Former Chair and also Secretary of the EMAG group of the Institute of Physics 2002 - 2006

Summary of research activities

Professor Rik Brydson (Leeds) oversees the Materials Characterisation Research group at Leeds and coordinates the interdisciplinary Electron Microscopy (LEMAS) Centre which houses extensive (environmental) SEM, TEM and FIB instrumentation and is an EPSRC Nanoscience Research Equipment Facility (LENNF) funded 2008-2020. He was co-director for the Centre for Molecular Nanoscience and Crystallisation in Chemistry at Leeds.

He has over 35 years of research experience of electron microscopy and surface analysis from a large number of different classes of materials. He leads the SuperSTEM aberration corrected microscopy consortium at Daresbury Laboratories in Cheshire, is currently a member of Executive Board of the European Microscopy Society, a member of Council of the Royal Microscopical Society, a former Chair and also Secretary of the EMAG group of the Institute of Physics.

He is the author of around 500 papers (h index of 65 - WoS), has a total research grant income of his career in excess of £50 M  (including involvement in EU Engineered Nanoparticle Characterisation and Toxicity projects: ENNSATOX, MARINA and QNANO) and has supervised well over 75 MSc and PhD students. He has written an RMS Handbook on Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy (Bios /Taylor and Francis 2001), has co-written a book on “Nanoscale Science and Technology" (Wiley 2005), edited a recent book on analytical  aberration corrected transmission electron microscopy with Wiley and has contributed a number of other chapters in specialist books on electron microscopy by other professional bodies covering Physics, Chemistry and Engineering.

In recent years his research interests have focused on applying high spatial resolution characterisation methods (particularly TEM and EELS) to the nanochemical analysis of softer, more radiation sensitive materials and he was co-organiser of a Complex Materials Symposium at the 2016 European Microscopy Congress in Lyon.

Responsibilities

• Head of Leeds Electron Microscopy and Spectroscopy Centre
• Consortium Chair National SuperSTEM facility at Daresbury

Research interests

I coordinate the Materials Characterisation Research group including the interdisciplinary Electron Microscopy (LEMAS) Centre, an EPSRC funded external user access (LENNF) facility and lead the Advisory Board for the UK National Electron Microscopy facility (www.superstem.com). I lead the Analytical Science Research Theme in the new Bragg Centre for Materials Research at the University of Leeds.

My research interests focus on applying high spatial resolution characterisation methods (such as microscopies and surface analysis)  to the structural and chemical analysis of engineering materials for functional, environmental and medical applications, with particular interest in nanomaterials (nanoparticles and nanowires/tubes) and more lately beam sensitive and soft materials as well as multiphase solid/liquid systems. I am also interested in in-situ measurements on individual nano-objects and combining modelling methods with experimental measurements either in a predictive or explanatory way.
 

• Core Equipment - SuperSTEM 2020
• Crystallisation in the Real World: Delivering Control through Theory and Experiment
• Friction: The Tribology Enigma EPSRC Programme Grant

Qualifications

• B.Sc. (Chemistry and Mathematics, Class I) Leeds University, 1988
• Ph.D. (Physical Chemistry) University of Cambridge, 1988

Professional memberships

• Royal Microscopical Society
• Institute of Physics

Student education

I am involved in teaching Nanoscience, Nanoengineering and Nanotechnology courses at both Undergraduate and Postgraduate levels.

I also teach in the areas of Materials Processing, Materials Characterisation and Crystallography. I have written a number of textbooks on Electron Microscopy as well as Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, and we annually run Microscopy Schools for the Royal Microscopical Society and have previously run Nanotechnology Summer Schools for the Smallpiece Trust.

Research groups and institutes

• Applied Photon Science
• Functional Materials
• Materials Characterisation

Current postgraduate researchers

• Celine M. King
• Jess Snelson
• Atreya Danturthi
• Rebecca Hughes
• Tiantian Chai

Projects

<li><a href="//phd.leeds.ac.uk/project/1944-microfluidic-fabrication-of-metal-and-metal-oxide-foams">Microfluidic Fabrication of Metal and Metal-Oxide Foams</a></li>