Professor Rebecca Nicholls

 Research

Rebecca’s research focuses on the structure and bonding of materials at the atomic scale.  The microscopic structure of a material determines the how the material behaves at the macroscopic scale and ideally we’d like to be able to change a material at the atomic level to control its properties.  The first step to doing this is to understand the material on the microscopic scale. 

Rebecca’s research bridges the gap between experimental and theory.  The experimental work involves characterisation of materials using electrons and X-rays.  Often experimental data has lots of information hidden inside it that can be difficult to extract.  Modelling and simulation can help interpret the data and tell us more about materials.  Rebecca’s current research interests include predicting the vibrational spectra that can now be measured with the electron microscope and understanding defects in rare earth superconductors.  

Bio

Rebecca studied Natural Science at Cambridge before obtaining a D.Phil in Materials Science from the University of Oxford.  Her work has always focused on combining experiment with theory to understand materials at the atomic scale.  She is one of the authors of the OptaDOS code and has worked on a variety of materials from doped graphene to zirconia. 

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