Alumni Biographicals

This section contains some pseudobiographical information about the previous members of the Surface Physics group. You can also return to the information about the current members.

The Escaped

Holly Hedgeland can probably still most easily be found watching the sunrise from the middle of the river Cam. Although she insists that she stayed with spin-echo for a postdoc not only because she was missing the river, given her new office will be even closer, we have our doubts...




Fay Tuddenham left behind an early in interest in breaking things, moving over to the Surface group from Fracture for her PhD. Three years, complete with impressively shiny data on helium-surface potentials, have passed quickly and now we wish Fay all the best with her new post at the Civil Service.




Andy Alderwick impressed us not only with the fancy detector physics he embarked on, but also the wealth of anecdotes, generosity and good humour he brought to the lab both during his PhD and now in his new role with the Cavendish IT pool.




When not looking after his young family, Gil Alexandrowicz worries about the precession of helium-three. Having rapidly become expert in the field, Gil stayed on with us after his PhD as a JRF at Caius and has now returned to Haifa to continue the good work in his own lab there.




Annie Weeks spent most of her time with us cleaning and looking at mirrors; all in the interest of science, of course! Although she seems to have come to the end of her grand European tour for now and has headed back over the pond, we're pleased to hear that she's currently making waves Stateside.




Peter Wraight won his battle to reconcile his addiction to gaming with a desire to function in everyday life, incubated new life-forms in *that* smoothie, and finally drank an impressive number of cans of Red Bull while putting the finishing touches to his thesis before riding off to better things in the City...




Donald MacLaren has somehow managed to escape after an impressive eight years SHeMing in the group; he has returned north and progressed to a SUPA-hero role in hilly Glasgow. Pretty exciting, we'll (finally) admit!




The good cheer and constant joking provided by Rob Bacon will be sorely missed around the lab. Now that he's finished his thesis and has more time for archery, we're expecting to see him representing Team GB in the next Olympics.




Cong-Cong Huang impressed us all with her boundless enthusiasm and interest. She has since moved on to a high-flying postdoc at Stanford, but her artwork still graces our walls in Cambridge.




Eternal pessimist Dave Riley was only really happy when worrying - having worried about the intricacies of helium scattering for a short while, he now gets paid to worry about other people's problems as a scientific consultant.




Ashraf Bocktor will be impossible to replace. His enthusiasm for electron scattering led him to camping (literally!) in the office for a while, much to everone's surprise - particularly first thing in the morning... We wish him well in his new job in the Department of Chemistry and hope that the hours are a little more 'normal' there.




Gabriel Lee is a success story - he finally acclimatised to British weather a mere 4 years after arriving. We hope that the re-acclimatisation to Singapore's climate is a little faster.




Shechar Dworski took very pragmatic approach to labwork: "if it doesn't fit, then hit it". I think his icon says it all! Shechar now works for a high-flying city firm in Toronto.



• One of the former occupants of room 413, Meng-Fan Luo, comes from a place a lot further away than Taiwan. If you've seen Men in Black, you'll know what we mean. Proof of this is the fact that he managed to get results in his first year. However, this does seem to go down well with the ladies - at least, that is, judging by the number of phone calls taken by his 'secretaries' each day. Meng-Fan has now moved on to do a professorship in Taiwan.

• Dr. Peter Fouquet joined us from Germany. He is the only member of the group, in living history, who can eat a whole Cavendish canteen lunch and pudding and still have room for a Mars bar. His main research interests currently were in the Helium-3 Spin Echo project. He has since moved onto Grenoble...

• Every Friday lunchtime, the group likes to go to a new pub in West Cambridge. Over the past years we have been greatly indebted to the the immense knowledge that James Knowling has of the local establishments. We hope he is continuing the tradition with the MGN employees around the Canary Wharf area of London!

• Philipp Niklowitz spent a year doing Surface Science, before moving to the Low Temperature group. Philipp is now a master EELS operator and did some amazing things with C60, oxygen and a little bit of liquid helium...

• Ian Shuttleworth has finally escaped from the darkness of room 412 for the bright lights of the Nottingham University Chemistry department. Around the Cavendish Lab he was known for occasional lapses of good moods. He continues to work for the improvement of inter euro relations, with surprisingly good results.

• Bodil Holst is the lady who shines light on crystals. Her chosen mission is to teach the thick physicists in this department that there's more to life than mass spectroscopy. Good luck. Bodil's charms have now followed the well worn path to Gottingen where she is to revolutionise the field with her bent crystals.

• Justin Buckland. A consultant for The Technology Partnership, Justin has finally attained that sacred title, physicist. We wish him luck, and hope that he won't really be designing new style paper clips all day.

• Hobson Bullman originally wrote these pages, and hence was exempt from cutting remarks. He is a thoroughly good bloke, and a thoroughly bad poet. He has however now left and is therefore no longer immune to attack. However, how could anyone possibly have a bad word to say about such a sweet little chappie?

• Shamim Sultana. Shamim has now left cold Cambridge for the warmer climes of Bangladesh. She could not escape surface science so easily though and now teaches a course in it. Her legendary people skills are sorely missed around the lab.

• Dr. Robert Folkerts is now out in the Mid West of America (or wherever Iowa is). We get occasional missives across the Atlantic: any really important news will be relayed direct to this web site.

• Dr. Neil Curson, Mr Windsurfing himself, following a post-doctoral position in Rutgers, USA, returned to Cambridge, to another group in the Cavendish. He has since seemed to have relocated to Australia...obviously following the sun!

• Dr. Andreas Reichmuth, the gifted German, is now consulting for Cambridge. He does not make round tea bags.

• Dr. Paul Dastoor, God's gift to mankind. Paul is now lecturing at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Although you can't hear him in this hemisphere, Paul reputably sings "Lord, it's hard to be humble" in the outback. Apparently, it scares off the wallabies.

• Dr. Mark Cowen is renowned as the person most likely to combine fortran-77 with a rugby scrum. After having spent considerable time trying to teach DOS to multitask, he now works for Logica teaching aeroplanes not to crash.

• Dr. Andrew Graham, aka The Leak Checker, is the man who eats Diff Pumps for breakfast. At the moment he only polishes atom scatterers in Gottingen, so the Cambridge one is beginning to look a bit tarnished. Come back Andrew, all is forgiven. Andrew is never seen without a screwdriver or a pint of beer.

• We are pleased to 'remember' Prof. Rob Lamb, who has long since moved on to fame and fortune. Rob is the current head of the chemistry department at the University of New South Wales, Australia. That, and the fact Rob holds two PhDs should provide inspiration to us all. It is gratifying to note, however, that Rob's previous absence from these pages was the source of much angst - I wonder how long it will be until he notices this citation...

The Ex-Visitors

• Richard Wilson spent some time over the summer calculating the shape of Bodil's bent crystal. No, we could not belieeeeve it either.

• Simon Osindero took up where Richard left off on the bent crystal front - apparently Richard didn't do the job properly. We look forward to reading the definitive account this time. That is if Simon ever finishes writing up...

• Martin Nohlen, visiting the group from Bonn, spent much of his time clambering around and about the atom scatterer, although he has been known to express the sentiment ``too much electronics for a chemist.'' Martin sports a very fine haircut. He enjoys mingling with the undergraduates, introducing himself with the line ``I'm a bit tired - I have been doing a lot of screwing in the lab today.''

• Yu Chen worked under Dr. Li, on the EELS system, but has now fled to Birmingham.

Any previous group members who would like to be included on the web pages should contact us.