Exeter student wins top physics award

The physics prize was sponsored by the UK's National Physical Laboratory.

Neil said: "It was a great honour to be short-listed for the SET award. I'm over the moon to have won. My thanks go to the judging panel for making the interview and presentation so enjoyable, the National Physical Laboratory for its sponsorship and to my supervisor Dr Misha Portnoi and his PhD student Richard Hartmann for all their help and encouragement. My thanks also go to my family, friends and colleagues who provided support throughout my time at Exeter."

His MPhys project supervisor, Dr Portnoi, commented: "Only the very best students are allowed to enter these awards. This major award is not given to any First class science undergraduate but is based on the strength and originality of their research project.

"Neil is an outstanding physicist and an extremely worthy winner. His award also proves the success of our strategy to involve physics undergraduates in original research early in their careers."

Neil will continue his academic career next month when he begins a PhD at Jesus College, Oxford. He comes from Shaftesbury, Dorset and, before heading to Exeter, he attended Shaftesbury School and Sports College.

He won the SET award for his research project: "Trapping Electrons in Graphene using Electric Fields", part of his undergraduate degree. The research was carried out over a two year period, working two days a week at the University's research-active scientific laboratories, a central part of the MPhys programme at Exeter.

Neil’s research was truly interdisciplinary, encompassing several subjects in the new College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences. The aim of the work was to propose theoretically and describe new electronic devices (electrical engineering) based on novel nanostructures deposited on a recently discovered material - graphene (material science).

Graphene, a form of carbon, was discovered in 2004 and is the thinnest known conducting material. It is a single layer of graphite - pencil lead - which is just one atom thick and has unique mechanical, electrical and optical properties. Scientists believe it could play a major role in computing because it has the potential to replace silicon and speed-up the transfer of information.

The study of graphene is one of the central research themes of the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences which recently established the Centre of Graphene Science.

Neil's project also won this year's Newman prize, awarded by the School of Physics for the most imaginative project. The central results of his project work have been published in Physical Review B, a leading US physics journal. This is highly unusual for research carried out by an undergraduate.

The SET Awards are organised by the Leadership Forum and sponsored by BP, Airbus, Anglo American, ARM Holdings, AstraZeneca, AWE, BCS, Bentley Motors, Laing O'Rourke, Lloyd's Register Educational Trust, Kraft, Microsoft Research, Morgan Crucible and The National Physical Laboratory.

The presentations were made on September 3 at the London Hilton, Park Lane.