Helen Gleeson | |
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| Born | Helen F. Gleeson |
| Alma mater | University of Manchester (BSc, PhD) |
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| Scientific career | |
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| Institutions | University of Leeds |
| Thesis | Optical and electro-optical properties of chiral mesophases (1986) |
| Website | physicalsciences |
Helen Frances Gleeson OBE FInstP is a British physicist who specialises in soft matter and liquid crystals. She is Cavendish Professor and former Head of the School of Physics at the University of Leeds. [1]
Gleeson grew up in the North of England and attended a secondary school in Keighley. [2] She studied A-Levels in Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Chemistry. [2] She graduated from the University of Manchester in 1983 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Physics. [3] She went on to study for a PhD which she was awarded in 1986 for investigations of the optical and electro-optical properties of chiral mesophases. [4] She remained at Manchester, working as a senior scientist in the Wolfson Liquid Crystal industrially funded research centre. [2] She was made a university lecturer in 1989. [2]
Gleeson's research investigates self-assembling and self-ordering materials, especially chiral liquid crystals. [5] [6] [7] At the University of Manchester, Gleeson was made Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences in 2004. [2] Between 2008 and 2010 she served as Head of the School of Physics and Astronomy. [2] She has served as the Chairman of the British Liquid Crystal Society. It was announced that Glesson would move to the University of Leeds as Head of School and Cavendish Chair of Physics in late 2014. [8] The position has been occupied by several eminent physicists, including William Henry Bragg. [8] She joined the University of Leeds in January 2015, but maintains a position at the University of Manchester as a visiting scientist. [9] [10] [11] She is interested in novel experimental techniques to characterise liquid crystals, and in 2016 contributed a chapter on Raman spectroscopy to the book Liquid Crystals with Nano and Microparticles. [12]
Her work concentrates on the experimental study of liquid crystals; in particular those with reduced symmetry. [9] She looks to use liquid crystals for photonics. [9] She holds several patents, including one for switchable contact lenses where the application of a voltage can change the refractive index of a liquid crystal. [13] This can moderate the focus of the lenses, the same as changing putting on reading glasses. She has also invented liquid crystalline temperature recorders, where the liquid crystal contains a reactive monomer and an initiator that can crosslink. [14] Working with Andre Geim, Gleeson produced the first graphene liquid crystal device. The devices contained transparent graphene electrodes, and had an exceptionally high contrast ratio. [15] Gleeson went on to use graphene in the switchable liquid crystalline contact lenses. In 2015, Gleeson and her PhD student Devesh Mistry were awarded a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 industry fellowship to work with UltraVision on novel contact lenses that incorporate liquid crystals into intraocular lenses, particularly for people suffering from presbyopia. [16] [17]
In 2017 she launched a five-year £1 million partnership with Merck Group to investigate liquid crystals in optical innovations. [18] In 2018 Gleeson and Mistry demonstrated a negative order parameter in a liquid crystal elastomer. [19] This work marked a breakthrough for the auxetic liquid crystal community; offering the first synthetic molecular auxetic polymer. [19] Her current research includes liquid crystals for laser protection and biosensing. [20] [21] She looks to develop a flexible and cheap strip that acts like a Liquid crystal thermometer, but instead of monitoring changes in temperature changes colour when it detects a bacterial toxin or biomarker. [21]
Throughout her career, Gleeson has been involved in several initiatives to improve gender balance in physics. [22] She is involved with the Women's Engineering Society. [23] She was awarded an Order of the British Empire in 2009, in recognition of her outreach efforts, and in particular her work to increase the number of girls studying physics. [9] She has served as chair of the Institute of Physics JUNO assessment panel. [24]
Liquid crystal (LC) is a state of matter that has properties between those of conventional liquids and those of solid crystals. For instance, a liquid crystal may flow like a liquid, but its molecules may be oriented in a crystal-like way. There are many different types of liquid-crystal phases, which can be distinguished by their different optical properties. The contrasting areas in the textures correspond to domains where the liquid-crystal molecules are oriented in different directions. Within a domain, however, the molecules are well ordered. LC materials may not always be in a liquid-crystal state of matter.
Ice crystals are solid ice exhibiting atomic ordering on various length scales and include hexagonal columns, hexagonal plates, dendritic crystals, and diamond dust.
Epitaxy refers to a type of crystal growth or material deposition in which new crystalline layers are formed with one or more well-defined orientations with respect to the crystalline seed layer. The deposited crystalline film is called an epitaxial film or epitaxial layer. The relative orientation(s) of the epitaxial layer to the seed layer is defined in terms of the orientation of the crystal lattice of each material. For most epitaxial growths, the new layer is usually crystalline and each crystallographic domain of the overlayer must have a well-defined orientation relative to the substrate crystal structure. Epitaxy can involve single-crystal structures, although grain-to-grain epitaxy has been observed in granular films. For most technological applications, single domain epitaxy, which is the growth of an overlayer crystal with one well-defined orientation with respect to the substrate crystal, is preferred. Epitaxy can also play an important role while growing superlattice structures.
Graphene is an allotrope of carbon consisting of a single layer of atoms arranged in a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice nanostructure. The name is derived from "graphite" and the suffix -ene, reflecting the fact that the graphite allotrope of carbon contains numerous double bonds.
A gyroid is an infinitely connected triply periodic minimal surface discovered by Alan Schoen in 1970.
Nader Engheta is an Iranian-American scientist. He has made pioneering contributions to the fields of metamaterials, transformation optics, plasmonic optics, nanophotonics, graphene photonics, nano-materials, nanoscale optics, nano-antennas and miniaturized antennas, physics and reverse-engineering of polarization vision in nature, bio-inspired optical imaging, fractional paradigm in electrodynamics, and electromagnetics and microwaves.
A blue phase mode LCD is a liquid crystal display (LCD) technology that uses highly twisted cholesteric phases in a blue phase. It was first proposed in 2007 to obtain a better display of moving images with, for example, frame rates of 100–120 Hz to improve the temporal response of LCDs. This operational mode for LCDs also does not require anisotropic alignment layers and thus theoretically simplifies the LCD manufacturing process.
Dame Athene Margaret Donald is a British physicist. She is Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge, and Master of Churchill College, Cambridge.
The Centre for Advanced 2D Materials (CA2DM), at the National University of Singapore (NUS), is the first centre in Asia dedicated to graphene research. The Centre was established under the scientific advice of two Nobel Laureates in physics – Prof Andre Geim and Prof Konstantin Novoselov - who won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of graphene. It was created for the conception, characterization, theoretical modeling, and development of transformative technologies based on two-dimensional crystals, such as graphene. In 2019, Prof Konstantin Novoselov moved to Singapore and joined NUS as Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering.
Lee Young-hee is a South Korean physicist. He is currently professor in physics and energy science at Sungkyunkwan University as a SKKU fellow. He is also director of the Center for Integrated Nanostructure Physics in the Institute for Basic Science (IBS). He has been a Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher in the cross-field category in 2018, 2019, and 2020.
AA'-graphite is an allotrope of carbon similar to graphite, but where the layers are positioned differently to each other as compared to the order in graphite.
Andrea Carlo Ferrari earned a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Cambridge after obtaining a Laurea in nuclear engineering at Polytechnic University of Milan, in Italy. He was also awarded an ScD from the University of Cambridge. He is the Founder and Director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre at the University of Cambridge, and the EPSRC Doctoral Training Centre in Graphene Technology. Prof. Ferrari is the Science and Technology Officer and the Chair of the Management Panel of the Graphene Flagship, one of the biggest research initiatives ever funded by the European Commission.
Sarah Jane Haigh is a Professor in the School of Materials at the University of Manchester. She investigates nanomaterials using transmission electron microscopy, including two-dimensional materials such as graphene.
Fiona C. Meldrum is a British scientist who is a Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Leeds where she works on bio-inspired materials and crystallisation processes. She won the 2017 Royal Society of Chemistry Interdisciplinary Prize.
Carol Trager-Cowan is a Scottish physicist who is a Reader in physics and Science Communicator at the University of Strathclyde. She works on scanning electron microscopy, including Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD), diffraction contrast and cathodoluminescence imaging.
Irina Grigorieva is a Professor of Physics at the University of Manchester and Director of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Centre for Doctoral Training in Science and the Applications of Graphene. She was awarded the 2019 David Tabor Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics and was elected as a Fellow of the Institute.
Pinshane Yeh Huang is an Associate Professor of Materials Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. She develops transmission electron microscopy to investigate two-dimensional materials. During her PhD she discovered the thinnest piece of glass in the world, which was included in the Guinness World Records. Huang was awarded the 2019 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
Ursel Bangert is the Bernal Chair in Microscopy and Imaging at the University of Limerick. She develops advanced characterisation techniques such as transmission electron microscopy for the atomic scale imaging of novel materials.
Emilie Ringe is an American chemist who is an Assistant Professor at the University of Cambridge. She was selected by Chemical & Engineering News as one of its "Talented Twelve" young scientists in 2021.
Tawfique Hasan is a Bangladeshi scientist who is Professor of Nanomaterials at the University of Cambridge. He leads the nanoengineering group in the Cambridge graphene centre and serves as deputy head of division B in the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge.
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