Member of the Institute of Physics (IoP), The American Physical Society (APS), The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) and the Irish Internet Association (iia)

BSc(Hons I) in Physics from University College Cork in 1989.

Worked with Prof. John McGilp at Trinity College Dublin and awarded a PhD in 1994 with a thesis entitled "The Nucleation and Evolution of Gold Superstructures on Silicon (111) Surfaces". The work was based on research into prototypical metal-semiconductor systems. The research was carried out in Dublin and abroad with collaborators in the University of Liverpool UK, Daresbury Laboratory UK, Technical University of Eindhoven NL, EPFL Lausanne Switzerland and Bell Labs/Lucent New York,USA.

Awarded an EU Marie Curie Fellowship recipient in 1994 and worked with Dr Kees Flipse at the Technical University of Eindhoven, NL on the fabrication and theoretical modelling of magnetic nanoclusters.

Teaching interests: Quantum Physics of Solids, Computational Physics, ultra-high vacuum physics and applications, Surface Physics and related areas.

Research interests: Nanophysics and surface physics, in particular low-dimensional systems, nanoparticles and magnetic systems. Nanocluster and nanoparticle research is predominantly in collaboration with the Technical University of Eindhoven. Computational investigations of nanostructure properties are carried out on computational cluster at DIT's FOCAS Research Institute.

Other Interests:

Recipient of the 2005 eircom.net Golden Spider Award for Best Educational Website (physics.dit.ie)

Founding member of the DIT Web Advisory Group and designer of a number of DIT websites such as Dublin Energy Lab, IEO, FOCAS, RESC and others.

Responsible for design and maintenance of the Optometry and School of Physics websites at DIT.

Industrial consultancy to IBM, Boston Scientific, Scientific Systems and others in the area of plasma technology for materials processing in industrial vacuum systems.

Science contributor to The Examiner newspaper during 1994 to 1998.

Co-founder of the award-winning internet technology and strategy company Automatic Netware Ltd (trading as Bookassist) and the Bookassist online reservations system.

Recipient of the 2005 Irish Internet Association's Netvisionary Award for contributions to Online Trade Technology.

Currently on career break from DIT in the role of CEO at Bookassist.