Contact InformationI am a Royal Society research fellow in the Theory of Condensed Matter (TCM) Group at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge and a College Lecturer at Emmanuel College.
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What I do in the Cavendish and elsewhere
 I do research in quantum physics with my Ph.D. student Bohshiang Jong and postdoc Martin Korth. This year, students Nick Russell and Fergus Noble are also doing short projects with us. We usually work in direct collaboration with the Richard Needs research group, which currently consists of Neil Drummond, Pablo Lopez Rios, Graham Spink, Andrew Morris, Norbert Nemec, Robert Lee, Gareth Griffiths, Priyanka Seth, Alston Misquitta and (on sabbatical from Imperial College) Matthew Foulkes. In my capacity as College Lecturer I teach undergraduates for Emmanuel College. This year I am doing small group supervisions in "Thermodynamics", "Oscillations, Waves and Optics", and "Quantum Physics". For Lent term 2009, I also gave a graduate lecture course entitled "Pilot waves, Bohmian metaphysics, and the foundations of quantum mechanics". I also offer Part II literature reviews and Part III student projects on topics in quantum foundations. I own a 16th century monastery in Tuscany that I run as a science institute ("The Apuan Alps Centre for Physics") and events venue, and my wife Sam Keil uses as her Italian art and sculpture studio. Every year I organize workshops and summer schools on the quantum Monte Carlo method at this venue, and there are usually a few other events taking place throughout the year (email me if you want to use the place for your own event). I maintain various web pages, in particular the resources page for the Cambridge quantum Monte Carlo research program and our CASINO software (and also its predecessor page here). I also supposedly oversee the various group libraries. TCM users of the New Coffee Library or the TCM Library should email me if they want to borrow a book. In principle, having designed and built it back in 1999 with the help of Derek the Cavendish Carpenter (now sadly missed), I'm also in charge of the TCM Coffee Bar - and I give an annual lecture in October on the best way to make cappuccinos - oh yes.. In my spare time - such as it is - I'm interested, in no particular order, in antique books, Etruscan archaeology, caving, climbing, and mountaineering, the explorer Richard F. Burton, old sailing ships, taxidermy, Victorian science (especially the dangerous stuff), Italian poetry, mathematical recreation, and astronomy. I also like to produce bad translations of old Italian manuscripts (see for example here). My first Ph.D. student Andrea Ma (Silver Medallist in the IOP's "Very Early Career Young Woman Physicist of the Year" 2007 !) is now working for a bank earning fifty times my salary, and good for her, though it's probably the wrong time to start doing this. Some activities I used to do in TCM: For six years I ran the Electronic Structure Discussion Group, a weekly discussion forum where researchers and students in the TCM Group get together to present and chat about their work. As of 2007 Neil Drummond has now kindly taken this over as I am too old. I used to run TCM Films - a weekly trip to get physicists to the cinema to see poncy art movies and argue about them afterwards over a glass of wine - but after many years this sadly ran out of steam due to widespread lack of interest and the short attention span of Young People Nowadays. Maybe one day it will be resurrected. Here is a list of Every Film We Ever Saw in 5 years of operation. I used to keep up a resources page for the electronic structure program CRYSTAL, but this is no longer maintained.
My research interests |
