Role

Professor Jason Crain is Head of Physical Sciences at the National Physical Laboratory. He is responsible for NPL's strategy and science quality in the physical sciences across all Divisions. He is also Professor of Applied Physics at the University of Edinburgh and has been Visiting Professor at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in New York since 2003.

Biography

Professor Crain's background is in condensed matter physics and disordered and exotic materials studied using experimental and computational techniques. He has made major contributions in elucidating structure property relationships in complex materials using simple or minimal model systems. These include order-disorder transitions in semiconductors, artificial DNA nanoswitches, colloid-liquid crystal composites, minimal self-assembling systems. With IBM he has been involved in computer simulation of disordered materials including the development of methods for incorporation of quantum mechanical responses in simple semi-empirical models. He has led several large industrial research projects resulting in IP licenses and commercial exploitation particularly in the area of rapid, high-fidelity detection of biomolecules.

He was founding Director of the COSMIC Research Center at the University of Edinburgh, is Fellow of the Institute of Physics (IOP), member of the steering committees of the IOP Liquids Group and the Scottish Bioinformatics Forum and former Royal Society of Edinburgh Research Fellow. He has authored over 150 publications and holds five patents.

Contact details

E-mail: jason.crain@npl.co.uk
Tel: +44 20 8943 6107