Dr F. Nur Ünal

• MSc in Physics, Bilkent University, September 2012
• PhD in Physics, Bilkent University, December 2016

Nur completed her PhD at Bilkent University, during the final year of which she joined the Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics at Cornell University as an exchange student. She subsequently held a postdoctoral position at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Germany (2017-2019) and then moved to the University of Cambridge after being awarded a Royal Society Newton International Fellowship and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship (2020-2024). In 2024, she was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and joined University of Birmingham, where she leads her research group working at the interface of condensed-matter physics, atomic physics and quantum science.

Nur has a broad international network of theoretical and experimental collaborators across the UK, Europe, the United States and China. She regularly gives invited talks and lectures at institutions, conferences and scientific schools worldwide. She has also undertaken a wide range of teaching and organisational activities, such as co-organising the Royal Society-funded conference New Frontiers in Topological Materials in Cambridge (2025).

• Year 4 Advanced Quantum Mechanics
• Year 4 Project supervision

Current Students

• William Blakey, PhD, University of Birmingham
• Cara Faulkner, PhD, University of Birmingham
• Yusuf Erdoğan, PhD, University of Birmingham
• Jordan Martin, PhD, University of Birmingham
• Osama Alsaiari, PhD, University of Cambridge

Past Students

• Dylan Gower, MSc, Birmingham
• Freddy Plunkett, MSc, Birmingham
• Yuchao Liu, MPhil, Cambridge
• Yuchen Yang, MSc, Cambridge
• Laurens Smulders, MSc, Cambridge
• Will Hunt, MSc, Cambridge
• Russell Goh, MSc, Cambridge
• Ollie Breach, MSc, Cambridge
• James Walkling, MSc, Cambridge    
• Tom Sheppard, MSc, Cambridge
• Filip Marijanovic, MSc, Cambridge (Tessella Prize, 2022)
• Ruairidh Forgan, MSc, Cambridge
• Cameron Kemp, MASt, Cambridge
• Miguel Martinez, MASt, Cambridge (Nevill Mott Prize, 2021)

Enthusiastic and exceptional students interested in undertaking a PhD or a post-doc, are encouraged to contact Dr Nur Ünal as early as possible.

• Topological phases of matter
• Quantum geometry
• Multigap topology and non-Abelian systems
• Out of equilibrium systems, Floquet driving, quantum quenches
• Ultracold quantum gases
• Strongly correlated phenomena
• Superconductivity
• Localisation and disorder