Research Staff
Dr. Jason Gow: Jason was involved in the proton radiation damage study of the swept charge device (CCD54) used in the Chandrayaan-1 X-ray spectrometer. His work on swept charge devices continued with an initial proton damage study performed using the next generation of devices. These new devices are being studied for possible implementation in the soft X-ray spectrometer on the Chandrayaan-2 lunar orbiter and the soft X-ray imager on China's HXMT mission. Jason has been involved in the radiation damage assessment of the CCDs for use in the medium class mission Euclid, this has involved an initial assessment of the CCD204 and a comparative study using p-channel CCD47s. He worked with Gordon Hopkinson of SSTL on an ESA funded radiation damage assessment of the CCD204, which combined with discussion between the Euclid consortium and e2v has led to the development of a custom CCD for Euclid, designated the CCD273. Jason is currently working with Neil on a like-for-like comparison of p-channel CCD204's to clearly demonstrate the advantage of using p-channel CCDs in hostile radiation environments. Jason is also the group's radiation safety officer.
Dr. Tom Greig: Tom joined the group in May 2010 and is one of three CEI researchers who are members of the Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC) for ESA's Gaia mission, due for launch in 2012. Tom is currently investigating how the space radiation environment will impact the performance of the CCDs for the blue and red photometers onboard Gaia. Tom holds a PhD in CMOS image sensors and his research interests include investigating utilising some of the advantages of CMOS imaging technology for scientific applications. In his spare time Tom is a keen Snowboarder and Footballer and a committed supporter of Tottenham Hotspur FC.
Dr. David Hall: David joined the group in 2006 to study for a PhD on "Exploring the impact of detection physics in X-ray CCD imagers and spectrometers". This research was based largely around two projects. The first project focussed on simulating the instrument background for several missions, namely XMM-Newton, Swift and Suzaku, with the aim of aiding the understanding of the formation of the background noise with a view to reducing it in future missions. The second project involved using photon-counting to image X-rays and gamma-rays using a scintillator and Electron-Multiplying CCD (EM-CCD) to provide high-resolution images in the 20-200 keV energy range. Following from this study, he has worked as a PDRA on many different projects including the simulation and analysis of radiation induced damage to charge transfer in CCDs for the ESA Euclid and Gaia missions. Currently, as part of his work as an e2v Research Fellow, he is following three main avenues of research: the simulation of charge transfer and radiation damage in CCDs, novel instrumentation for medical imaging and synchrotron research, and soft X-ray and electron detection using the EM-CCD for imaging and spectrometry applications.
Dr. Calum MacCormick: Calum joined CEI in April 2012 to work an optical test bench setup which will be used to characterise the performance of the CCDs on the Euclid and Gaia satellites. He has a background in cold atom physics, having previously worked at Los Alamos National laboratory and the Open University, first on Bose Einstein condensates and then on ultra-cold Rydberg atoms. He worked on the UK's first Bose Einstein condensation experiment at the University of Sussex for which he was awarded a DPhil in 2003.
Dr. Neil Murray: Neil received his PhD degree for work on improvements to MOS CCD technology for future astronomy missions from Brunel University in 2008, where he characterised the X-ray performance of e2v's high-rho sensors that had been developed for near-IR astronomy. In 2008-2010, he followed similar research themes as a Research Associate within the e2v centre for electronic imaging at the Open University (Milton Keynes, UK) developing a soft X-ray camera for an Off-Plane X-ray Grating Spectrometer in collaboration with the UCL-MSSL, University of Iowa, University of Colorado and NASA-Goddard. Currently, the main aspects of his work as an e2v funded PDRA still in the centre for electronic imaging, is to design and build a variety of experiments and techniques to perform detailed characterisation of CCDs in support of the space missions that the group is involved with. Neil also contributes with his technical expertise to the group's wider research interests, as well as those of e2v technologies' and provides practical training to group's post-graduate students.
Dr. Konstantin Stefanov: Konstantin received his PhD from Saga University in Japan in 2001 working on radiation damage effects in CCDs for detector applications in high energy physics experiments. After that he joined Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and worked on high speed column-parallel CCDs, readout electronics, semiconductor device simulations and characterisation. At RAL he led the development of an innovative sensor in deep submicron CMOS technology incorporating CCD-style charge transfer for in-pixel signal storage. From 2008 he worked at the scientific and electronic engineering consultancy company Sentec Ltd in Cambridge. Konstantin joined CEI in 2012 to continue his research into advanced CCD and CMOS devices.
James Tutt: James has recently completed his PhD with the CEI on CCD and EM-CCD developments for high resolution X-ray spectrometers and is now continuing this work within the group. His work involved the testing of devices across the soft X-ray energy range using the PTB beamline at BESSY II. The experiments performed allowed the spectral resolution degradation that would occur through the use of multiplication gain at X-ray energies to be quantified. He is continuing his work on EM-CCDs for direct X-ray detection and will evaluate the effect that filters have on device QE over the soft X-ray band. The work will allow the range of filter thicknesses that can be deposited onto CCDs to be identified along with the attenuation effect that they will have on incident X-rays.
Post-Graduate Students
Ben Dryer: Ben is a fourth year post-graduate student studying under Andrew Holland and Neil Murray. His project is related to the study of radiation damage and x-ray spectroscopy performance in CMOS photo-detectors and how the technology can be improved to compete with CCDs in space applications, for both astronomy and planetary observation. This work involves the characterisation of radiation induced dark-current generation and alteration of other device properties due to proton, gamma, and heavy ion irradiation. The devices being used are a family of CMOS devices manufactured using a 0.18 µm process not designed to be radiation hard, and so present a good measure of baseline CMOS radiation hardness. Due to this work, Ben is currently involved in several space instruments in varying stages of development.
Richard Harriss: Richard is a second year ESA-NPI funded post-graduate student working under Andrew Holland and Neil Murray. His PhD is based around developing imaging sensor technology for high-radiation space environments. A large part of this work is based around CMOS Imaging Sensors. Richard is currently the technical lead on the OU's Compact CMOS Camera Demonstrator (C3D) for UKube-1, which is a technology demonstrator payload aiming to perform in orbit radiation characterisation of the e2v 1.3 MPixel CMOS sensor. As well as being exposed to the realities of a space mission from inception to launch, a large part of Richard's work is based around developing drive electronics for the 3 CMOS cameras. Taking this work forward Richard hopes to look at more radiation tolerant CMOS devices as well as investigating new generations of rad-hard CCD technology. All of this work is framed within the context of developing imaging technologies suitable for deep space exploration, such as the EJSM mission.
Phillipa Smith: Phillipa graduated in Astrophysics and then spend 18 months teaching in Japan. She is now a third year post-graduate student, characterising the new generation of swept charge devices to be used on the large area soft X-ray spectrometer on the Chandrayaan-2 lunar orbiter. The mission will build on the instrument heritages of SMART-1 and Chandrayaan-1, aiming to map the elemental composition of the lunar surface. This work also involves a full characterisation and optimisation of the flight detectors to aid in the future analysis of CLASS data, and advice on shielding requirements to reduce the effects of radiation damage to the detectors throughout the mission. Additionally, she spent 10 weeks on a NASA LPI internship for lunar exploration.
Andrew Clarke: Andrew graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Electronics in 2010. Since then he has been working towards his PhD, studying under David Hall and Andrew Holland. His research focuses on the 3D modelling of semiconductor detectors with model verification on test structures. Recent modelling has included the CCD204 and CCD273 to compare device functionality and investigate charge storage mechanisms; both devices were designed and manufactured by e2v for use on the proposed ESA Euclid mission. This work helps to develop understanding of the underlying processes which govern how CCDs operate.
Matthew Soman: After completing his undergraduate studies in Physics at Warwick University in 2010, Matthew joined the group as a post-graduate student working under Andrew Holland and David Hall. His project focuses on the development of current and new instrumentation for Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS) experiments at the Swiss Light Source, PSI.
Edgar Allanwood: Ed is a first year postgraduate student being supervised by David Hall and Tom Grieg. His PhD will be working towards the creation of a sub-pixel optical bench test setup. This will be used to measure the degradation of the measured optical PSF on a Euclid CCD271 after it has been irradiated to levels expected during the Euclid mission lifetime. Ed joined the CEI from the University of Liverpool where he was studying electronic engineering.
Dan Weatherill: Dan graduated with an M.Sci in physics from the University of Cambridge in 2012. Working under Andrew Holland and Tom Grieg, his PhD project, provisionally, is investigating X-ray detection using CMOS sensors in space applications. Dan's outside interests include watersports and playing music.
Rob Simpson: Rob completed his undergraduate degree in Physics at the University of Southampton in 2011 and is currently an engineer in the project delivery team at e2v. Rob is working towards a PhD on a part time basis under Konstantin Stefanov and Tom Greig, studying space radiation environments and their effects on a new generation of space qualified CMOS sensors. Rob is investigating radiation performance of low noise low Vt sensors, large photodiodes and extremely low temperature characteristics of radiation induced RTS and dark current.
Visiting Researchers
Dr. David Lumb: Dr David Lumb is an expert on space science instrumentation. He has worked for 30 years on developments of X-ray and gamma-ray image sensors and optics. He has been involved in several successful astronomy projects, including NASA Chandra and ESA XMM-Newton, for which he was the Instrument Team Leader. At present he is the Study Scientist for the International X-ray Observatory project. David currently visits the CEI group to work on some research projects and forge closer links between the CEI research group and ESA science department.
Dr. Mark Robbins: Dr Mark Robbins is an expert in imaging technologies, with a particular interest in radiation damage effects. He has been involved with the development of advanced CCD technologies such as the electron multiplying CCD used for single photon imaging. He is currently leading the detector engineering activities for the Optical Payloads Group of Surrey Satellite Technology, where he is involved in radiation effects studies and also with the integration of detectors for visible, NIR, SWIR and MIR Earth Observation applications.
Dr. James Endicott: James did his PhD in Nottingham and studied dilute gallium arsenide nitride resonant tunnelling diodes. He joined e2v in 2005 and worked as a development engineer and project engineer for two years. In 2008 he joined the Applications team and started working on proposals and bid management for new business in space and scientific imaging. James is currently visiting the CEI group on a regular basis to provide supervision of the research projects, forge closer links between e2v and the CEI research group and fulfil e2v management responsibilities.
