Mark Harrison

HELLO!

I'm 32 years old and am currently working for the Auto-ID Center in Cambridge

I was born and grew up in the west end of Newcastle and attended Walbottle High School, before studying for my first degree (B.A. in Natural Sciences [Physics]) at Christ's College, where I also later did most of my Ph.D. work.

In October 1991, I started my PhD research in the Cavendish Laboratory, (Department of Physics) in the University of Cambridge.
In December 1994, I finished my Ph.D. dissertation, entitled
"The Charged Excitations of Conjugated Polymers and Oligomers".
This work was carried out in the Optoelectronics research group, under the supervision of Prof. Richard H. Friend, F.R.S.

From October 1994 to September 1997, I was a research fellow at St. John's College, Cambridge.
During my research fellowship, I extended my studies on the charged excitations to longer oligomers and also made a detailed study of the photocurrent action spectra of the polymer MEH-PPV, as well as writing a chapter of a book on optical applications of oligomers.
I have recently co-authored another book chapter with Magnus Granström for a handbook of polythiophenes.

In 1997, Cambridge hosted the 4th European Conference on Molecular Electronics (ECME'97).
I was responsible for developing the publicity, WWW site, automated e-mail responder and database for the conference, as well as helping with the scientific, financial and logistical organisation of the meeting.

I then spent 18 months at the Philipps-University in Marburg, Germany, where I was working in the research groups of Prof. Dr. Heinz Baessler and Prof. Dr. Gerhard Weiser, within the framework of a Training and Mobility of Researchers research network of the European Commission, called SELOA (Synthetic Electroactive Organic Architectures).

The materials I studied are semiconducting polymers and molecules, which can be used to prepare light-emitting displays, solar cells and photodetectors, as well as arrays of transistors and diodes for improved LCD displays and low-cost electronics (e.g. 'smart cards').

My list of publications is available, with abstracts.

Since returning to Cambridge in April 1999, I have worked for Cambridge Advanced Electronics plc. (later Internet-Extra Ltd.) developing web applications. Since Internet-Extra ceased operations at the end of 2001, I have been travelling in New Zealand and am now working in the Auto-ID Centre, within the Engineering Department of the University of Cambridge - a joint project with MIT to develop an internet of physical objects tagged with radio-frequency ID tags, which uniquely idenfify the type of object and serial number, with the product's data and history being represented in the Physical Markup Language.

My main leisure activities are hiking/hillwalking and cycling, mainly in the Lake District and Scotland, but also in Ireland and Bavaria. I also enjoy taking photographs (almost entirely slides) of the various landscapes I visit - see them at www.scenicviews.org.

When I can't get to the hills so easily, I enjoy going to the cinema. We have a very good Arts Cinema in Cambridge, which shows several European films and hosts a very interesting film festival in July.

To relax, I enjoy listening to music, mainly instrumental, both classical and contemporary.

I also enjoy cooking - I make my own pizza, ice-cream and stir-fries.

I have a few friends in Germany and the Netherlands and try to improve my foreign languages (mainly German and to a lesser extent French) when I go travelling abroad and also during this current year in Germany.

I originally set up these pages to include a little more information about my research and leisure activities and interests, with a few hyperlinks which I hope will be of use, not just to me but also to my friends and other like-minded folks.

You can contact me by e-mail!

If you need to contact me by means other than e-mail, look here.

Well, that's all folks! Welcome to my Web pages. I hope you find something useful / interesting. Enjoy the ice-cream recipes!

  • Going Home...

    Mark Harrison mark.harrison@cantab.net, Cambridge, UK, November 14th 2002