Professor Alasdair W Clark
Professor of Nanoscale Engineering
Mission Priority Areas
Multi-disciplinary research is what excites me. The most impactful, worthwhile projects come from large scale initiatives like this one. Only by exposing myself to the new ideas and challenges that come from groups and PIs with different scientific, cultural, and life experiences than my own, do I grow as a scientist and person.
I would be delighted to join the community to help drive forward what I am sure will be some really interesting projects.
My research passion is taking cutting-edge nanotechnologies and translating them into practical, useful tools to solve real-world problems.
My group works at the interface of nano fabrication, optics, and DNA nanotech, where we seek to build new sensors, materials, and tools that we can apply to problems and applications across the College of Science and Engineering.
I would like to form collaborations with anybody that has sensing, materials, or imaging challenges in their research. My research and collaborations are broad. We currently have funded projects with biologists (making new materials for observing RNA splicing), chemists (building new sensing tools in collaboration with an industry partner), physicists (making optical metasurface components for communication systems), environmental engineers (new sensors for monitoring water treatment facilities), and industry partners (building commercial quality-control tools for the beverage industry).
In this CDT I would like to supervise projects that will let us apply our technology and expertise to new areas of discovery. As a supervisor I like to be involved with my student’s projects. We meet once a week as a full group, and I also meet each student at least once a week to discuss their work individually. However, I have an open door policy so most students actually end up seeing me far more than that because they come and knock on my door. As the PhD progresses into years 2 and 3 I encourage students to take control of their work and to drive their own research.
I have graduated many students over the past 10 years. Some have moved on to industry positions in fields like biotech and diagnostics (both in the UK and overseas). Others are pursuing academic careers and are now working as post-docs across the world.
I have a strong commitment to EDI. For a number of years I led the Culture subgroup of the School’s EDI committee, and I was one of the people responsible for producing the School’s successful Athena Swan Silver Award submission. My group is highly diverse, containing people from all over the world, and a gender split of 40:60, F:M (group of 10 people).
Outside of work I enjoy going on adventures with my kids. Anything outdoors will do. Preferably somewhere with hills and water. Hikes, bike rides, throwing stones into lochs, etc. are my favourite things. When the kids are in gymnastics club I enjoy getting lost on long-distance bike rides around the Trossachs.
