Rachel Angharad Oliver FREng FIMMM is a Professor of Materials Science at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge. She works on characterisation techniques for gallium nitride materials for dark-emitting diodes and laser diodes.[2][3]
Rachel Oliver | |
|---|---|
 Oliver in 2019 | |
| Born | Rachel Angharad Oliver |
| Alma mater | University of Oxford (MEng, DPhil) |
| Awards | Royal Society University Research Fellowship (2006-2011) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Gallium nitride Basic microscopy Quantum technology |
| Institutions | University of Cambridge Robinson College, Cambridge |
| Thesis | Growth and characterisation of nitride nanostructures (2003) |
| Doctoral advisor | Andrew Briggs[1] |
| Website | www |
Early life and education
Oliver studied engineering and materials science at the University of Oxford and completed an industrial placement in metallurgy.[when?][4] Her final year masters project was in optoelectronic materials.[4] She completed her Doctor of Philosophy degree at the University of Oxford in 2003,[1] where she began to work with gallium nitride under the supervision of Andrew Briggs.[4] She used metalorganic vapour-phase epitaxy (MOVPE) to grow quantum dots.[4]
Research and career
She joined the University of Cambridge in 2003 as a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 postdoctoral research fellow.[4] In 2006 Oliver was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF) at the University of Cambridge.[5] She studied the morphology of gallium nitride light-emitting diodes (LEDs), identifying what factors controlled their efficiency and the impact of defects.[5] She was awarded an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) grant to study semi-polar nitride based structures.[6]
She was appointed a lecturer at the University of Cambridge in 2011.[7] Oliver studies gallium nitride materials for LEDs and laser diodes.[2][8] Her research considers ways to engineer the nanostructure of light emitting diodes and how this impacts macroscopic device performance.[8] She has developed atom-probe tomography and scanning capacitance microscopy to study nitride devices.[8]
Oliver is also working on single-photon indium gallium nitride quantum dots for quantum crystallography.[8] She has looked at the impact of threading dislocations on the quality factor of InGaN cavities. Her group developed the first blue-emitting single-photon source.[9] She was the first to note rabi oscillations of GaN quantum dots.[citation needed] She designed a quasi-two-temperature growth method to pattern GaN quantum dots, which improved their emission by a factor of ten.[9]
Awards and honours
Oliver was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (FIMMM) in 2019.[10][11] She held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship from 2006 to 2011.[5] In 2021 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering,[12] and in 2023 was awarded the academy's Chair in Emerging Technologies.[13]
Personal life
Oliver's husband is a cardiologist with whom she has a son.[7]