Alec Cooper
Heriot-Watt University
Supervisor: Robert Weston
Alec is from Crawley, West Sussex, in the UK. He completed his
integrated MSci degree in Physics at the University of Bristol in
2016; the title of his Masters project in theoretical optics (under
Professor Mark Dennis) being "Polarisation Singularities in
Anisotropic Crystal Optics". After turning down a PhD offer from NTU,
he took a year out of academia, during which, among other part-time
roles, he enjoyed tutoring A-Level students, before joining Heriot
Watt for his PhD in 2017. He is currently studying under Professor
Robert Weston, using representation theory of q-deformed algebras in
an attempt to derive Baxter TQ-relations for open quantum spin
chains.