people

Luke Caldwell

Luke did his PhD with Mike Tarbutt and Ben Sauer at Imperial College London and a postdoc with Eric Cornell and Jun Ye at JILA. In 2023, he started as a lecturer at UCL and currently holds a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.

He is interested in developing experiments which use the tools and techniques of atomic and molecular physics to learn new things about the universe. In his previous position he made a measurement of the electric dipole moment of the electron, a key quantity in constraining beyond-Standard-Model physics which seek to explain why the universe seems to be made of matter and not antimatter.

Outside of physics he likes to go running around the parks in London and play his guitar out of the earshot of others.

email: luke.caldwell

Ben Fox

Ben is a PhD student in the group. Before this, he completed his undergraduate degree at Swansea University and earned a Master’s in Mathematical Physics at Durham University. Ben has worked in a variety of roles, including as a laser eye technician and a beer brewer. His research interests focus on the search for new physics beyond the Standard Model, with an emphasis on dark matter, neutrino mass, and CP violations, to gain a deeper understanding of the universe. Outside of physics, Ben enjoys being on the rugby pitch and playing the clarinet.

email: benjamin.fox.23

Sam Haswell

Sam did his undergrad at the University of Nottingham studying natural science. He completed his master’s project, under the supervision of Matt Brookes, which involved using quantum-enabled magnetometers to make measurements of brain activity in order to create a brain-computer interface. He looks to continue his work with quantum metrology here at UCL, doing his PhD under the tutelage of Luke Caldwell.

Outside of academia he is an avid baker, a consumer of terrible reality TV and was previously a dispensing technician at a pharmacy.

email: samuel.haswell.24

Cathy Darling

Cathy completed her undergraduate degree at Durham University, where she studied Maths and Computer Science, and then spent a few years as a software engineer doing full-stack web development for startup companies. In 2024, she returned to academia and picked up experimental physics as a PhD student in UCL’s Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Quantum Computation and Communications. Cathy’s particularly interested in the applications of ultracold molecules within quantum computing – where they can be used as the fundamental unit of computation, the quantum bit – but she wouldn’t mind uncovering the secrets of the universe while she’s at it. The rest of the time, Cathy likes reading things that don’t make her brain hurt, spending all her savings on theatre tickets, and generally enjoying all London has to offer.

email: cathy.darling.24