Jonathan Breeze

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Jon graduated in Astrophysics from Leeds University, then spent 10 years in industry - first at the UK National Physical Laboratory (NPL) working on cryogenic clocks, then at Matra-Marconi Space / Astrium (now Airbus Space) as a microwave design engineer for spacecraft passive payload equipment. He returned to academia to do research into microwave absorption in metal-oxides at London South Bank University, then moved to Imperial College London and dabbled in nanophotonics and metamaterials whilst finishing his PhD. In 2012 he demonstrated the first room-temperature solid-state maser using the organic molecular system photo-excited pentacene:p-terphenyl. This maser could only work for a fraction of a millisecond so in 2018 he demonstrated continuous masing using optically-pumped nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defects in diamond. In 2019 he was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and the Henry Moseley Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics. In 2021 he took up a faculty position at University College London (UCL) in the Department of Physics & Astronomy. In 2023 he was awarded the Michael Faraday Medal by the Institute of Physics.

Interesting fact - was a winner on a Welsh-language TV kids’ gameshow.