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Dr John Proctor

Biography From 2000 to 2004 I read physics at Oxford University. After graduating, I studied for my Ph.D. at the School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering at the University of Manchester under the supervision of Prof. Matthew Halsall. My research for my Ph.D. focussed on Raman spectroscopy of single-walled carbon nanotubes at high pressure and growth of single walled carbon nanotubes by catalytic chemical vapour deposition.
On completion of my Ph.D. in 2007 I took up a postdoctoral position with the Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions (CSEC) at Edinburgh University, supervised by Prof. Eugene Gregoryanz. In this position I concentrated on the high pressure synthesis of hydrides and on producing the first study of graphene at high pressure, in collaboration with the University of Manchester. The study is now very highly cited (258 citations on google scholar). In 2010 I undertook a second contract with the University of Edinburgh, to conduct experiments for the Atomic Weapons Establishment on the phase diagrams and melting curves of metals and alloys using synchrotron X-ray diffraction to multimegabar pressures and laser heating of materials at high pressure.
I took up my first permanent academic position at the University of Hull in September 2011, at age 30, and moved to my present position at the University of Salford in 2013. Since appointment to my first academic position in 2011 I have established my own international reputation in the field of high pressure science and technology with a number of publications, arising from 14 beamtimes at the Diamond Light Source, European Synchrotron Radiation Facility and ISIS Pulsed Neutron Source as well as my in-house facilities at the University of Salford. I have published 40 journal papers and two textbooks, and have a h-index of 24 (google scholar).
My initial focus as an independent researcher at Hull and Salford was on applications of high pressure in materials science (hydrogenation of graphene, studying performance of novel boron carbides for ceramic armour applications etc.) but the main focus of my current research is on the nature of the liquid and supercritical fluid states of matter. Our understanding of this has changed drastically in the past five years (see my recent article in Physics World, linked below). I have played a leading role in the experimental verification of the newly-discovered transition between liquid-like and gas-like behaviour in the supercritical fluid state and have written the textbook on this topic. My most recent work on liquids has been featured in New Scientist.
Research Interests Squashing things, condensed matter physics, fluids, optics, diamond anvil cell, neutron scattering, X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, photoluminescence, imaging, confocal microscopy, equations of state
Teaching and Learning I teach the following courses:

•Level 5: Optics (1/2 of a 20-credit module).
•Level 5: Electromagnetism (20-credit module).
•Level 6: Nuclear physics (1/2 of a 20-credit module).
•Level 6: Introduction to planetary science (1/2 of a 20-credit module).
I also supervise students for final year undergraduate projects and regularly co-author research papers with them as a result. I have retained innovations that we were forced to make in order to teach online during the covid pandemic: I now provide as standard an asynchronous recording of each lecture on youtube alongside conventional delivery face-to-face in the lecture theatre. In addition I have a series of 28 youtube videos covering the key maths topics required by physics undergraduates, which I use to support my physics courses at all levels. In total I have recorded a total of 132 youtube videos for teaching purposes since 2020.
I am a fellow of the Advance HE (formerly the HEA) and have published a textbook aimed at level 6 undergraduate students (An Introduction to Graphene and Carbon Nanotubes, CRC Press 2020). Recently my innovation on the level 5 electromagnetism course of finding a way to prove the equations governing the field due to a magnetic dipole without resorting to the vector potential has been published in the AIP journal The Physics Teacher.