Diamond Early Career Medal

Mark’s undergraduate degree was at Durham University where he studied Chemistry, taking a year abroad at the University of Texas at El Paso to complete his MChem degree. He moved to the University of Edinburgh in 2008 to undertake a PhD under the supervision of Paul Attfield. His doctoral work for which he was awarded the 2013 Physical Crystallography Group Thesis prize and is published in the journal Nature resolves a long standing controversy regarding the electronic ground state of Magnetite (Fe₃O₄). On completion of his doctoral studies Mark moved to the Magnetic X-ray scattering Beamline I16, Diamond Light Source where he continued his research into electronic and magnetic ordering phenomena in the solid state and he also developed a new interest in Multiferroic materials. In September of 2014, Mark was awarded a three year Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 to study “Microscopic Mechanisms in Multiferroic Materials” in the Chemistry department at the University of Oxford where he worked closely with the Goodwin Group developing a number of collaborations. During his time at Oxford, Mark also held a fellowship at St Catherine’s College, Oxford was a college tutor in 2nd/3rd year inorganic Chemistry at St Anne’s College, and was involved in senior lab demonstrating in the department. In 2017, Mark moved to the Chemistry Department of the University of Warwick where he now holds a Royal Society University Research Fellowship on "Probing the Dynamic Properties of Functional Materials through Symmetry Analysis". Besides conducting his program of research, he is involved in tutoring and lecturing in 1st and 2nd year Inorganic Chemistry. Mark is also actively involved in the British Crystallographic Association community, teaching at the biennial Intensive Teaching School in X-ray Structure Analysis in Durham, and is a member of the Physical Crystallography committee and the BCA council.