Richard Dixey passes PhD viva
Richard Dixey, a PhD student within the MEE group under the supervision of Dr Paul Saines, passed his viva subject to minor corrections on Friday the 14th of February. His thesis was entilted “1D Ising Chains in Frustrated Magnetocaloric Frameworks” and described how magnetic cooling materials can be optimised for use at liquid helium temperatures (4-20 K) when in cycled magnetic fields that can be generated by a permanent magnet. This work is significant in the context of the greatly increasing cost and scarcity of liquid He, which is used for a wide range of cryogenic cooling including medical imaging e.g. MRIs. Richard’s examiners were Dr Lucy Clark (Department of Chemistry, University of Liverpool) and Dr Emma McCabe (MEE Group). Richard can now happily return to London where he has been a postdoc in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Queen Mary University of London since October last year. Congratulations Richard!