About

Tom began his postdoctoral positions at the University of York working jointly as a project manager for a collaborative EU FP7 project on ultrafast magnetism involving 9 universities from across Europe, and Seagate Technology. In 2015 he moved to the University of Exeter to work as a senior postdoctoral research fellow in the Group of Prof Gino Hrkac on functional materials on an EPSRC project with the University of Manchester.

In 2015 Tom was awarded a Marie Curie BeIPD COFUND project at the University of Liège hosted by the Nanomaterials group of Prof Matthieu Verstraete. The project involved using electronic structure calculations to fit second principles Hamiltonians to study the dynamics of magnetic and multiferroic materials. In 2020 he was awarded an EPSRC New Investigator Award to setup a research group on Terahertz magnetisation dynamics in collaboration with the High Performance Computing Department at the Science and Technologies Facilities Council.

Tom is also a committee member for an EU COST project (CA17123-MAGNETOFON - Ultrafast opto-magneto-electronics for non-dissipative information technology) and honourable secretary of the Institute of Physics Magnetism working group.

Details of Grants/Awards:

• £228,352 EPSRC New Investigator Award, EP/T027916/1 TERASWITCH - Towards low dissipation THz-induced switching of magnetic materials
• 14k GPU hours on the Cambridge Service for Data Driven Discovery (CSD3) operated by the University of Cambridge Research Computing Service, provided by Dell EMC and Intel using Tier-2 funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (capital grant EP/P020259/1), and DiRAC funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council.
• Travel award under COST Action P19 (Multiscale Modeling of Materials) - €1750.
• Marie Curie Incoming (COFUND) Fellow at the University of Liège – salary (2 years) + €16K expenses (travel, consumables, equipment).
• Accomodation award under COST Action MP1306 (Training workshop for SPR-KKR code), €276.

Specialist areas of interest:

• Multiscale modelling
• Optical switching
• Ultrafast spin dynamics
• GPU computing
• Interface magnetism.

Specialist areas of interest:
- Multiscale modelling
- Optical switching
- Ultrafast spin dynamics
- GPU computing
- Interface magnetism.

Teaching

Department of Engineering and Mathematics

Business, Technology and Enterprise

Subject Area

Physics and Engineering Mathematics

Courses

BSc Physics

Modules

- Quantum Mechanics
- The Professional and Practical Physicist
- Introduction to Condensed Matter Physics
- Final Year Physics Projects

Research

• Industry and Innovation Research Institute

The group is currently primarily focused on an EPSRC-funded project, TERASWITCH, which is a collaborative project with STFC and is using multiscale modelling to investigate the dynamics of antiferromagnetic materials after excitation with high frequency, short burst terahertz laser pulses. The project runs for two years and is in collaboration with experimental partners at the Freie University, Berlin. STFC are using electronic structure methods to determine second principles Hamiltonians. The group at Hallam are using atomistic spin dynamics and micromagnetic methods to investigate the dynamics.

Tom is also engaging in a collaborative project with the National Physical Laboratory and ICMM Madrid and the Czech Metrology Institute on a method of determining the form of domain walls in magnetic thin films using a local probing method. The experimental work at NPL is being supported by Tom’s micromagnetic code based on the Landau-Lifshitz-Bloch equation. Tom is also collaborating with researchers at the University of York on ultrafast magnetisation dynamics and also continues to collaborate with Dr Unai Atxitia at the Freie University, Berlin on a range of topics.

Featured Projects

Link 1 https://gow.epsrc.ukri.org/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/T027916/1
Link 2 https://phys.org/news/2019-04-lasers-magnets-fluids.html
Link 3 https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/02/hot-idea-faster-hard-drive
Link 4 https://www.iop.org/physics-community/special-interest-groups/magnetism-group#gref
Link 5 https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA17123/#tabs%7CName:overview
Link 6 https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YWr3Z2cAAAAJ&hl=en

Collaborators:

- Prof Matthieu Verstraete – University of Liège, Belgium.
- Prof Roy Chantrell – The University of York.
- Prof Gino Hrkac – The University of Exeter.
- Dr Stuart Cavill – The University of York and Diamon Light Source.
- Dr Ilie Radu – Max Born Institute, Berlin.
- Dr Unai Atxitia – The University of Konstanz, Germany.
- Dr Oksana Chubykalo-Fesenko, ICMM, Madrid.
- Dr Chudong Xu, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China.
- Dr Matthew Ellis, Trinity College, Dublin.
- Prof Aldo Romero, West Virginia State University, USA.
- Dr Ezio Iacocca, University of Colorado, Bolder, USA.
- Dr Jerome Jackson, Science and Technologies Facilities Council, Daresbury, USA.
- Dr Craig Barton, National Physical Laboratory, UK.

Publications

Other activities

Current External Responsibilities

- UK Committee Member and Working Group Leader for the MAGNETOFON COST Action, CA17123
- Honourable Secretary of the Institute of Physics Magnetism Committee
- Organiser of the Current Research in Magnetism (CRIM) 2021 conference

- Ad Hoc Reviewer: Nature Communications, Nature Light: Science and Applications, Nature Scientific Reports, Phys. Rev. Lett., Phys. Rev. B, Phys. Rev. Appl., Phys. Rev. E.,
- Journal of Alloys and Compounds, JAP, JMMM, APL, IEEE Trans Magn, MMM Annual Conf. Proc.
- Reviewer of Grants for External Organisations: Deutsche Forschungsgemeimschaft (DFG), Polish National Science Council.

Previous Conference and Workshop Organisation and Session Chairs:

• 2020 – Current Research in Magnetism 2020, Online – Organiser.
• 2020 – IOP Magnetism Conference, Leeds, UK – Joint Programme Chair.
• 2020 – IOP Magnetism Conference, Leeds, UK – Joint Programme Chair.
• 2019 – Current Research in Magnetism 2019, IOP London – Organiser.
• 2019 – IOP Magnetism Conference, Leeds, UK – Joint Programme Chair.
• 2015 – EMN Ultrafast Meeting on Ultrafast, Las Vegas – International Program Committee.
• 2015 – Ultrafast Magnetism Conference, Nijmegen, The Netherlands – Chair of session “Ultrafast Magnetic Control”.
• 2016 – Sol-SkyMag, San Sebastian, Spina – Chair of session “Spintronics and Spin Orbit Effects”.

Postgraduate supervision

Current PhD Students

Mr Joel Hirst

Current Postdoctoral Research Associates

Dr Sergiu Ruta