About the Network
The UK and Ireland Ferroelectrics Network aims to facilitate communication and collaboration between scientists and engineers working in the field of ferroelectrics in the UK and Ireland, across academia and industry.
Meet the Committee
The UK and Ireland Ferroelectrics Network committee was reformed in April 2024, following an invititation for expressions of interest in February 2024.
Dr James Roscow
(University of Bath)
Chair
James is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Bath. He obtained a BSc in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Manchester in 2013, and his PhD from the University of Bath in 2018. His research interests involve the design, processing and characterisation of ferroelectric ceramics and composites. His involvement in the Network initially began in 2019 through the organisation of the Covid-affected Ferroelectrics UK 2020 in Bath. Please get in touch if you have ideas on how the Network can help the ferroelectrics research community.
Dr Amit Kumar
(Queen's University Belfast)
Secretary
Dr. Kumar was appointed to a lectureship in Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) in 2013, became a senior lecturer in 2019, reader in 2023 and currently serves as the Head of Centre for Quantum Materials Technologies in School of Mathematics and Physics. Exploring novel phenomena in ferroelectrics and functional imaging have formed the core of his research career and he has made several key contributions to these fields over the years. He is considered an expert on nanoscale imaging of ferroelectric phenomena and has written a relevant editorial article for Nature (2014). At QUB, he has built his own research group working in novel dimensions of ferroelectric research which explores the underpinning physics to utilise novel functionality arising out of domain and domain walls in ferroic materials (with special attention to stress-mediated phenomena and electronic behaviour of domain walls).
Dr Laura Stoica
(Thales UK)
Industry Lead
Laura Stoica has been a Piezoelectric Materials Research Manager at Thales UK since 2016. She received her B.Eng. in Applied Electronics from Politehnica University of Bucharest, Romania in 2011 and the M.Sc. degree in Nanomaterials for Nanoengineering from the University of Leeds, UK in 2012. She earned her Ph.D. degree in piezoelectric materials from the University of Leeds in 2016. Her research focuses on the development and characterisation of piezoelectric materials and their design into novel underwater transducers. She works closely with academia and is the industrial supervisor of PhD students at several universities across the UK. In 2020 she was recognised as Thales Specialist in piezoelectric materials for active and passive acoustic devices and in 2021 she was registered as Chartered Physicist with the Institute of Physics, UK.
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Dr David Cannell
(PMI Trust Fund)
Treasurer
David worked in the development and manufacture of ferroelectric and dielectric ceramics for 40 years. He received his BSc and PhD from the University of Leeds before moving into industry. He was Chief Materials Scientist at Morgan Advanced Materials and then CeramTec, before retiring at the end of May 2023. For the last 5 years he has been treasurer for the PMI Trust Fund which supports ceramics education and training in the UK and has recently become a STEM Ambassador to share his enthusiasm for science, maths and engineering with school students.
Dr Subhajit Pal
(Queen Mary's University London)
PDRA Representative
Subhajit is a postdoctoral researcher at Queen Mary University of London. He obtained his MSc degree in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati and obtained a PhD degree from the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Before QMUL, he worked as a post-doc at the Center for Nanoscience & Engineering, Indian Institute of Science. Currently, he is working on photo-induced ferroelectric properties at the nanoscale. He has joined the committee as the postdoctoral researcher representative.