Stuart Burns (UNSW)
Congratulations to FLEET PhD student Stuart Burns, who submitted his PhD thesis recently, and whose hard work was rewarded by a rare UNSW scholarship to continue to carry out research while his thesis is being reviewed.
Stuart is a PhD candidate working with Prof Nagy Valanoor and Dr Daniel Sando at UNSW to study the functional behaviours of ferroelectrics at the nanoscale.
The UNSW Science PhD Writing Scholarship funds deserving PhD students who have just submitted their thesis for the three months before the examiners reports are received, with an aim of increasing publication rates during the last stages of the PhD program.
During this period, Stuart will write and submit three manuscripts, having been awarded the maximum monetary value of $6000 for the full three-month period.
Only very few scholarships are awarded and competition is therefore high. Assessment criteria include level of achievement during candidature, potential to publish journal articles and support from the School.
Stuart’s PhD thesis The Effect of Geometric Constraints in Multiferroic Heterostructures, is the culmination of 3½ years’ study for a Materials Science and Engineering PhD.
Stuart’s research has used neutron diffraction experiments to investigate multiferroicity of thin films fabricated by pulsed laser deposition (PLD).
Combining this with focused ion beam nanostructuring and advanced scanning probe microscopy techniques, he aims to further define the prerequisites for multiferroic device integration into common industrial nanoelectronics.
“It has been a very exciting few years in Nagy’s Thin Film Functionalities (TFF) group at UNSW,” said Stuart.
“Between the three of us (Nagy, Dan and myself), numerous ideas and projects have come to fruition, some of which have just been squeezed into the PhD thesis at a late stage – this next three months will allow us to tie together and share these ideas with the ferroelectrics and wider nanotechnology research communities!”
“Our group’s visit to EPFL in Switzerland for the annual International Symposia on Applications of Ferroelectrics (ISAF) in July, along with the FLEET ERC Workshop in UNSW last month has reaffirmed the wider interest in our work. It’s nice to see that the hours in the PLD labs in UNSW MSE basement are paying off!”