People

Dr Sam Ladak – Lab Leader

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I completed my PhD from the University of Exeter in 2006. The project involved the fabrication and characterisation of magnetic tunnel junctions. After this I carried out a year in industry at Seagate technology, designing and prototyping magnetic read-heads. In 2007 I decided to go back to academia and took up postdoctoral positions at the University of York and then Imperial College where I remained for four years.

In 2012, I was awarded a personal chancellors (SBP) fellowship within the School of Physics and Astronomy with the aim of establishing a research group within the emerging field of 3D nanomagnetism. Today, the focus of my work is upon 3D magnetic nanostructure fabrication and characterisation using non-linear optical techniques.

Over the past several years I have secured > £2M of external (EPSRC) funding as well as small grants from the Royal Society, Welsh Crucible and Leverhulme Trust. 

I routinely work with other academics from other leading universities (Exeter, Bristol, Southampton) as well as large international research labs (eg. IBM Zurich).

A full list of my publications and citations can be found here (Scholar) and here (Scopus)

Dr Arjen Van Den Berg

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I finished my undergraduate degree at Cardiff in 2017 where my final year project focused on 3D micromagnetic simulations. After graduation I joined the group as a PhD student to continue this work alongside fabricating 3D magnetic nanowires for racetrack memory applications using two-photon lithography. My main area of expertise is in micro magnetic modelling using various packages.  Outside of the lab, I am a keen amateur photographer and an avid musician.

Dr Joseph Askey

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My name is Joe, I am currently an MSc student  working on a summer research project to improve magnetometry upon 3D magnetic nanostructures. I will be starting an EPSRC funded PhD project in October and will further be using two-photon lithography to create 3D magnetic nanostructures and artificial biological structures under the supervision of Dr Ladak and Professor Langbein.

Edward Harding

I graduated with a Master of Physics degree from the University of York in 2018 where my final year project was an investigation into the operation of an electrothermal plasma microthruster through computer simulations. Now I am a first year PhD student seeking to develop a new breed of 3D thermoelectric metamaterials with controlled nanostructured features upon the 100 nm scale. I also will be working on synchrotron methods to image 3D magnetic nanostructures. 

Vani Lanka

Hello! My name is Vani, I have recently graduated with a Masters in Physics at Cardiff University where my final year project was to characterise ferromagnetic materials under MOKE magnetometry. My research will focus on fabricating and measuring 3D Artificial Spin-ice.

Alumni

Matthew Hunt

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Completed his PhD under Dr Sam Ladak in 2018, working on the fabrication and measurement of 3D magnetic nanostructures. He continued to work with Dr Ladak as a postdoctoral research associate  on an EPSRC funded project. 

Andrew May

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Andrew was an EPSRC funded PhD student working upon the fabrication and measurement of 3D artificial spin-ice structures. Andrew now works in data science. 

 

Alaa Hejazi

Alaa was a PhD student, working on the fabrication of 2.5D structures using two photon lithography techniques and evaporation. She has moved onto an academic position in Saudi Arabia. 

3D Nanomagnetism Lab, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University