Rachel Oliver

Prof. Rachel Oliver received her MEng (2000) and PhD (2003) degrees from the University of Oxford, UK. She then moved to Cambridge as a Research Fellow at Peterhouse College, and later won a prestigious Royal Society University Research Fellowship. In 2011, she took up her permanent academic position at the University of Cambridge, where she is currently Professor of Materials Science and Director of the Cambridge Centre for Gallium Nitride. She was one of the Women in Engineering Society’s Top 50 Women in Engineering in 2020, and was selected as a Distinguished Lecturer by the IEEE in 2021. In 2021, she was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and currently holds a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies.

Rachel’s research focusses on understanding how the small scale structure of nitride materials effects the performance and properties of devices. She uses expertise in microscopy and materials growth to develop new nanoscale nitride structures which will provide new functionality to the devices of the future. She was the first to apply atom probe tomography to nitride materials, developed the first InGaN-based single photon source, and most recently has patented novel methods compatible with large scale manufacturing for the porosification of nitride materials. She is a founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Porotech, a University spinout company exploiting her group’s research on porous nitrides, and hence developing novel microLED displays. Porotech won the Business Start-Up Award from the Institute of Physics in 2022.

Rachel is also a passionate advocate for increased equality, diversity and inclusion in science and engineering. She was an Equality and Diversity Champion for the University of Cambridge School of Physical Sciences from 2018-2022, and is currently a member of the Royal Academy if Engineering's Diversity and Inclusion Committee. She has addressed the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee on equity issues.