Professor Gavin Burnell

Profile

Gavin is Professor of Materials Physics. From 2006 until 2011 he was an Advanced Research Fellow supported by EPSRC. He completed his first degree and PhD in Materials Science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge. After graduating he was a post-doctoral researcher in  the Device Materials Group in Cambridge, before moving to Leeds and joining the Condensed Matter Physics group in the summer of 2006. He was promoted to Associate Professor in September 2015 and Professor of Materials Physics in June 2024.

Research interests

Gavin's research interests centre on understanding the physics of electron transport in materials through the fabrication and characterisation of nanoscale devices, in particular in superconducting and magnetic hybrid structures. Conventional superconductivity and ferromagnetism are competing quantum phenomena requiring different ordering of electron spins. This mutual antagonism at the most fundamental level leads to a wide range of novel and interesting phenomena if sufficiently small energy and length scales can be examined. Doing this requires state-of-the-art nanofabrication and carrying out sensitive measurements at low temperature and the latest facilties based experiments.

Qualifications

• BA Mat. Sci. & Metallurgy, University of Cambridge 1994
• PhD Mat. Sci. & Metallurgy, University of Cambridge 1998

Student education

As well as running final year projects related to his research areas, Gavin teaches experimental physics on the third year MPhys programmes and coding and computational data analysis in the second year.. From 2019-2024 he was academic assessment lead (Exams Officer) for the School of Physics and has co-lead the new Physics programme curricula.

Projects

<li><a href="//phd.leeds.ac.uk/project/868-electrically-switchable-ferromagnetic-josephson-junctions">Electrically Switchable Ferromagnetic Josephson Junctions</a></li>