Optoelectronic Materials Spectroscopy Lab

Latest — Jan 30, 2026

Scaling the 11th Century Start-up, or, Why Universities Break People

53% of academics show signs of depression. This is a role design failure, not a resilience issue: we are managing 21st-century experts with medieval guild structures. To fix the crisis, we must abandon the 'Lone Wolf' myth and re-engineer the role. Don't blame the players; change the game.

More issues

The £13B non-profit: Valuing the modern University

"University isn't worth it?" Applying a corporate valuation model to UK HE reveals a £13bn asset - more than Man Utd & City combined. It’s time to stop managing universities like charities and start valuing them as sovereign utilities.

Equity for Equations: The Rise of Venture-Backed Physics

I started 2026 with a grant rejection letter. Meanwhile, 'Neolabs' like Periodic and SSI are raising billions without a product. We are witnessing the birth of a new asset class: the venture-backed Institute for Advanced Study.

UKRN: Responsible Research Metrics

Patrick completed training from the UK Reproducibility Metric, on the topic of Responsible use of Research Metrics. This programme, delivered by Southampton University, helped to design a course to be delivered on the responsible use of citations, h-index, etc.

PhD viva: Examiner at Cambridge

Patrick was external examiner for Ningning Gao, alongside internal examiner Prof. Rachel Oliver at the University of Cambridge. Ningning's supervisor is Prof Hannah Joyce.

New Publication: Self-Catalyzed AlGaAs Nanowires and AlGaAs/GaAs Axial Heterostructures Grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy

A new paper in collaboration with the Huiyun Liu group (UCL), Ana Sanchez group (Warwick) and David Mowbray group (Sheffield). In our contribution, led by Stephen Church, we showed that a previously low quality structure (AlGaAs) can be made to emit strongly at room temperature. Reference: Self-Catalyzed AlGaAs Nanowires and

New Publication: Wavelength-tunable femtosecond pulsed laser for the characterisation of solid-state sensors

Group PhD Nawal Al-Amairi (now lecturer at UTAS Oman) has published a device work in collaboration with the particle physics team at Manchester. In this new work, an ultrafast laser system is used to characterize different device structures for particle detection, revealing a broad spectrum approach to novel 3D detectors.

Fairwell: Stephen Church

A farewell to group postdoc (and later research Fellow) Stephen Church, who (after 14 years) leaves the university for a new role as a lecturer at the University of Salford. Many thanks for all your work, and we look forward to seeing what you achieve next!

New Publication: As-Flux-Induced Diameter Control in GaAs Nanowires

A new paper has been published in J Phys Chem C led by the Huiyun Liu group at UCL, with Stephen Church as lead Manchester contributor. In this work, an improved growth approach for GaAs nanowires is introduced that provides a route to generate diameter control and a method to