Emily Heppell

Emily is a PhD student on I06 in a joint position between Diamond Light Source, ISIS Neutron and Muon Source and the University of Oxford. Her research concerns interfacial magnetism and magnetic coupling phenomena in thin film heterostructures that she grows via molecular beam epitaxy and magnetron sputtering. Emily has a particular interest in the interfaces between antiferromagnets and topological insulators. She studies these heterostructures primarily using X-ray magnetic linear and circular dichroism, photoemission electron microscopy and polarised neutron reflectometry. Before starting her PhD in 2021, Emily graduated with a first-class honours M.Sci. degree in Physics from the University of Birmingham. Her thesis was titled Quantum Magnetism in Less Than Three Dimensions. As the graduating student with the highest overall mark, she was awarded the SWJ Smith Prize.