Judith Driscoll

Prof. Judith Driscoll FREng FInstP
Alma mater	University of Cambridge Imperial College London
Awards	IoP Joule Medal and Prize RAEng Armourers and Brasiers' Company Prize IEEE James Wong Award IOM3 Kroll Prize
Scientific career
Fields	Materials Science
Institutions	University of Cambridge Imperial College London Los Alamos National Laboratory
Website	https://driscoll.msm.cam.ac.uk/

Judith MacManus-Driscoll FREng is a Professor of Materials Science at the University of Cambridge. Her research is concerned with the nanoscale design and tuning of functional oxide thin film materials for a variety of energy applications for generation, transmission, storage and harvesting.^[1] She is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, Materials Research Society and American Physical Society.

Early life and education

Driscoll studied materials science at Imperial College London.^[2] She was awarded the Governor's Prize for highest academic achievement in 1987.^[3] She completed a PhD in high-temperature superconductivity at the University of Cambridge.^[2] She was an IBM Postdoctoral Fellow from 1991-1995 working at Stanford University with Prof. Theodore Geballe, Prof. John Bravman, and with Dr. Robert Beyers at IBM Almaden Research Center.

Research and career

In 1991 Driscoll joined the IBM Almaden Research Center.^[4] She joined Imperial College London as a lecturer in the Department of Materials, where she was promoted to reader in 1999.^[4] She joined the University of Cambridge in 2003 before taking a sabbatical to work at Los Alamos National Laboratory.^[4] She is still a visiting researcher as Los Alamos National Laboratory. She returned to Cambridge in 2003 and was promoted to Professor in 2008.^[4] She was the first woman to be Professor in the University's Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, as well as being the first woman to be Professor in Natural Sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge.^[5]

Driscoll studied high-temperature superconducting films of yttrium barium copper oxide, using nanoparticles to improve flux pinning.^[6] These worked by introducing perfectly sized defects in the superconductor.^[2][7] Driscoll studied high-temperature superconducting films of yttrium barium copper oxide, using nanoparticles to improve flux pinning. These worked by introducing perfectly sized defects in the superconductor. Her method has been adopted widely by industry. She also proposed and demonstrated a new way^[8] to fabricate high temperature superconductors much more rapidly which paved the way for a new industry process.^[9]

She identified the route to minimising leakage in Bismuth ferrite films,^[6] and was the first person to show strain switching and spontaneous ordering in heteroepitaxial oxide films.^[6] Driscoll pioneered vertically aligned nanocomposite films^[10], leading to many advanced functionalities, e.g. high performance memristors^[11] and nanoionic devices^[12].

Driscoll is founding editor-in-chief of American Institute of Physics's APL Materials Journal.^[13][14] She is a governor at St Mary's School, Cambridge.^[5] She has several patents relating to high-temperature superconductivity.^[15] She is working to improve diversity in the physical sciences.^[16] She was made a Fellow of the Institute of Physics in 2002, of the American Physical Society in 2012, the Materials Research Society in 2015,^[3] and the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2018.^[17]

Honours and awards

• 2015 Institute of Physics Joule Medal and Prize^[6]
• 2015 Royal Academy of Engineering Armourers and Brasiers' Company Prize^[18]
• 2017 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers James Wong Award^[19]
• 2018 Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining Kroll Prize^[20]

References