Professor Andrew J Morris M.Phys, Ph.D., FIMMM, MRSC, M.Inst.P.

• M.Phys., University of York, Heslington, York, UK
• Ph.D., Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Professor Morris was an undergraduate in Theoretical Physics at the Department of Physics at the University of York. Andrew did his final year project with Rex Godby on vertex corrections in many-body perturbation theory.

Andrew started his PhD in 2006 with Richard Needs in the Cavnedish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. He did various projects including using quantum Monte Carlo on Cold Atomic Gasses and AIRSS to find new point defects in semiconductors.

From 2009 Andrew was a PDRA at the Department of Physic and Astronomy at University College London, UK, working with Chris Pickard. His main project was AIRSS on lithium-ion batteries.

In 2012 Andrew moved back to Cambridge as an independent fellow funded by the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability. In 2017 he moved to the University of Birmingham, UK.

Density-functional theory, battery applications, first principles modelling and spectroscopy.

How to join the Morris group?

Keep an eye out on my X @condensedmatter and LinkedIn feeds for funded positions. I'm always happy to discuss fellowship applications with strong applicants, just drop me an email.

Andrew’s current interest is in applying the AIRSS method to a range of different materials science problems, focussing mainly on lithium-ion batteries. "Trial and error" plays a large part in the discovery of new materials. From the initial idea, the material must be synthesised and categorised before it can be tested which is slow, difficult and expensive. High-throughput computation accelerates this process by suggesting then screening new materials, allowing us to ask "what if?" without the time and expense of manufacturing and categorizing samples. His group models Li-ion batteries at the atomic level and try to uncover new materials to increase their capacity.

He uses global search techniques such as AIRSS to predict the ground-state structure of materials. From the ground state his research group uses theoretical spectroscopy techniques to compare their results to experiment. As a junior developer of the electronic structure code CASTEP and a member of the UK Car-Parinello consortium, he develops tools for optics, electron-energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) and core-loss analysis through the OptaDOS code. He uses and modifies CASTEP-NMR to calculate the chemical shielding of battery materials in collaboration with experimentalists.

• External Examiner for MPhil in Scientific Computing, University of Cambridge
• Committee Member, Institute of Physics Computational Physics Group