Final Leverhulme appointment has been made (April 2005) as Dr. Stephan Klemme has been appointed a lecturer in the School of GeoSciences. He joins the four other recently appointed academics to work on the CSEC's Materials Research programme supported by the Leverhulme Trust:

• Prof. J. Paul Attfield, previously Reader in Materials Chemistry at the University of Cambridge , joined CSEC and the School of Chemistry on 1^st September 2003. He holds the new Chair of Materials Science at Extreme Conditions, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. Paul Attfield's research interests are centred on inorganic materials such as superconducting and magnetic oxides, and their synthesis, structures, and properties at extremes of temperature and pressure.


• Dr. Gail Ferguson started as a Lecturer in Biological Sciences and joined CSEC on 20^th September 2004. Her research focuses on understanding the molecular basis of extreme pressure- and temperature-adapted growth in marine microorganisms. To address this, she uses a combination of genetic, biochemical, molecular and physiological approaches.


• Dr. Stephan Klemme joins CSEC and the School of Geosciences on October 1^st 2005. Stephan's main research interests include phase relations in the Earth's mantle, trace element abundances in igneous and metamorphic rocks and minerals, subduction zone processes, and melting processes in rift settings. Recent work focused on high-pressure experimental and thermodynamic studies of the properties of geological and synthetic materials, including those of major importance to the Earth's mantle.


• Dr. Serena Margadonna holds a Dorothy Hodgkins Royal Society Fellowship and joined the School of Chemistry and CSEC as a Lecturer in Solid State Chemistry on 1^st October 2004.  Serena's research focuses on the synthesis and characterisation of new multistable molecular functional materials, which show interesting structural/magnetic/electronic phase diagrams. The principal strategy of her research is to tune the interplay of the lattice, charge, spin and orbital degrees of freedom both chemically (changing the chemical composition) and physically (varying an external parameter like pressure, photo-irradiation and magnetic or electric field).


• Dr. Philippe Monthoux started as a Lecturer in Physics on 1^st October 2003. His research focuses on systems where electronic correlations play an essential role, in that for instance they can lead to anisotropic forms of superconductivity. Of particular interest are materials that can be tuned, under pressure, to the border of a Quantum Critical Point. In collaboration with experimentalists at CSEC, Philippe is focusing on obtaining a better physical understanding of such systems. In turn, the theoretical insights will be used to guide experimental research.