Staff

Tim was born in the United States, and did his undergraduate studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He obtained his PhD from the University of Oxford (2013), and subsequently held junior research fellowships at the University of Cambridge (2013-16) and Imperial College London (2016-19) before moving to Edinburgh with a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2019. Tim's research deals with finding new mathematical formulations of quantum field theories. His interests include: perturbative structures of gauge and gravitational theories, novel presentations of physical observables, aspects of twistor theory and string theory, and asymptotic properties of general relativity.

Murad grew up in Alexandria, Egypt. He studied mathematics and physics in Karlsruhe, the ENS in Paris as well as at the LMU in Munich where he obtained his PhD (2009) in mathematical physics. He was then a postdoc at the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics in Bonn, the High Energy Theory group at Harvard and in the Mathematics Department of Harvard before moving back to Germany to lead an Emmy Noether research group at the department of mathematics of the University of Hamburg. He joined Heriot-Watt in 2024 as an associate professor for mathematical physics. Murad’s work is on quantum geometry, an area where mathematical structures are developed which are adapted to problems of quantization of physical systems and their dualities using methods from complex algebraic geometry, representation theory and number theory.

Theo studied mathematics as an undergraduate and masters student at the University of Cambridge and then obtained his PhD in mathematics from the University of Warwick. Following postdoc positions at the University of Bristol and the University of Oxford he joined University of Edinburgh as a lecturer in 2020. His research focuses on random matrix theory and stochastic interacting particle systems which have some underlying integrability. He is particularly interested in connections of the above to special functions and combinatorics.

Sayantani was born and grew up in India. She completed her Ph.D. from TIFR (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research), Mumbai India in 2012. After a brief period of post doctoral research in HRI (Harish Chandra Research Institute), Allahabad, she worked as a faculty member in IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Kanpur and then in NISER (National Institute of Science Education and Research), Bhubaneshwar, India. She joined the University of Edinburgh in 2024. Her work covers mathematical formulation of fluid dynamics, holography and black hole physics.

Harry was born in Edinburgh and grew up in Australia. He was an undergraduate at Sydney University and obtained his PhD at the University of Cambridge. He subsequently had a Fellowship at Corpus Christi College (Cambridge) and postdoctoral positions at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Durham University before coming to Edinburgh in 1990. He has worked in many areas of mathematical physics over the years with complete integrability (both in the classical and quantum regimes) a recurring theme. He has applied his research techniques to a wide range of problems beyond the horizons of mathematical physics (to problems such as network design and card shuffling).

Richard grew up in Glasgow, before completing his undergraduate studies at Cambridge University and his PhD at Oxford University. He started at Heriot-Watt in 2019, following postdoc positions at Leiden University (2012-15), Harvard University (2015-18) and Cambridge University (2018-19). His research mainly focuses on the dynamics of quantum systems with strong interactions, their implications for fundamental physics, and applications to strongly correlated states of matter.

Tudor grew up mainly in the American Midwest. He received his Ph.D. from Caltech (2010), and spent his postdoctoral years at Trinity College, Cambridge, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the Perimeter Institute, before becoming a founding member of the UC Davis Center for Quantum Mathematics and Physics in 2015. He joined the Hodge Institute at Edinburgh in 2020. Tudor's research lies at the interface of theoretical physics and pure mathematics, inspired by the dual questions: What algebraic and geometric structures govern the behavior of elementary quantum particles and fields? Conversely, how can physics be used to formulate new predictions and results in algebra, geometry, topology, and other branches of mathematics?

Anastasia was born and grew up in Greece. She studied Physics as an undergraduate in University of Athens. She got her PhD in Theoretical Physics from University of Miami. She then spent three years as a postdoc in UK (Durham and York), three years in LAPTH, France and two years in University of Bologna, Italy. She then returned to Greece in U. Patras as an assistant Professor. She is now a reader in Heriot-Watt University since 2013. Her research interests are: mathematical physics, statistical physics; in particular quantum and classical integrable models, and quantum groups.

Chris has been at Heriot-Watt for over 30 years. He is interested in solitons and nonlinear wave equations. His work covers pulses in continuum systems, and on lattices, which approximate soliton behaviour, both in classical and quantum systems; also systems with exact solutions that can be studied using techniques from algebraic geometry and computer algebra.

José was born in Havana, Cuba and raised in Madrid, Spain. He obtained a BS in Physics from MIT in 1984, with a thesis supervised by Alan Guth. He obtained a PhD in Theoretical Physics from SUNY Stony Brook in 1989 under the supervision of Martin Roček. He held postdoctoral positions in Universiteit Leuven (1989-1991), Universität Bonn (1991-1993) and Queen Mary and Westfield College (1993-1998). After one year as a lecturer in Queen Mary, he came to Edinburgh in 1999. His research interests lie in the mathematical aspects of supersymmetry, gauge theories, (super)gravity and string theory. He has also worked on conformal field theory and integrable systems and has even dabbled in knot theory to pass the time.

James grew up in Leeds and studied a masters in theoretical physics at the University of Leeds and the University of California, Berkeley. He then went on to complete a PhD in mathematics at the University of Nottingham. During this time, he held a visiting research position at Jagiellonian University in Krakow. After his PhD he went on to hold positions at the University of Strathclyde, the University of Glasgow, and the University of Nottingham before settling into a teaching position at Heriot-Watt University. His research interests centre around the area of non-commutative geometry, quantum gravity and algebraic quantum field theory.

Jelle obtained his PhD in theoretical physics within the subject of string theory from the University of Groningen in The Netherlands. He then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Albert Einstein Center in Bern, the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Brussels University (International Solvay Institutes) and at the University of Amsterdam. His research concerns holographic dualities in quantum gravity and string theory. In particular he is interested in limits of the AdS/CFT correspondence in which the duality becomes more tractable. In relation to this, he has worked on the foundations and applications of non-Lorentzian geometries, such as Newton-Cartan geometry, that arise in limits of string theory and general relativity. Finally, he also works on the fluid/gravity correspondence in non-AdS holography and on applications of non-Lorentzian geometry to fluid dynamics for non-relativistic fluids.

Lotte was born in the Netherlands. She studied mathematics and physics at the University of Utrecht and obtained her PhD in string theory in 2009 at the University of Amsterdam. She subsequently moved to Caltech as a postdoctoral fellow, and to Oxford as a research fellow. Lotte's research is driven by the interaction between theoretical physics and pure mathematics. On the physics side she is interested in fundamental questions in supersymmetric gauge theory and string theory. On the mathematics side there are often deep relations to geometry, topology and algebra.

Des Johnston grew up in Belfast and studied physics as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge before getting a PhD in Theoretical physics from Imperial College, London in 1986. He then spent three and a half years as a postdoc in LPTHE (now LPT) Orsay, France (1986-7), Caltech (1987-9) and the Free University of Berlin (1989-90)- just in time to see the wall come down. Deciding it was a good idea to get a proper job, but reluctant to get a haircut and put on a suit, he came back to Britain to work as a temporary lecturer at Lancaster University in the school of physics, before arriving at Heriot-Watt in 1990, where he has languished ever since apart from a year away in 1993-4 at Orsay again. His research interests are in statistical mechanics and disordered systems, with dabblings in simulating discretized models of gravity.

Anatoly did his undergraduate studies in Moscow. He received diplomas from the Independent University of Moscow and Moscow Oil and Gas Institute in 1995. He did his PhD studies in mathematics at the University of California at Davis under the supervision of Albert Schwarz. Subsequently he held postdoctoral positions at Berkeley (1999-2002), Hebrew University in Jerusalem (2002-2004) and Rutgers University (2004-2006). He joined the faculty at the Heriot-Watt University in September 2006. His research interests are in string theory, noncommutative geometry, two-dimensional conformal field theory, renormalization group flows in low-dimensional systems and their applications to string theory and condensed matter physics.

James was born in Leicestershire and was raised there and northern Italy. He studied at the University of Cambridge, where he obtained a Bachelor's degree in Natural Sciences (2000), followed by Part III Mathematics (2001) and a PhD in string theory at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (2005). He was then a college lecturer at Oxford University (2005-2006) and a postdoc at Durham University (2006-2009). In 2009 he was awarded an EPSRC career acceleration fellowship with Imperial College London, where he spent a year, before moving to the University of Edinburgh as a lecturer in 2010. His current research interests concern higher dimensional gravity/General Relativity, usually in the context of string theory and the gauge/gravity correspondence. He has a particular interest in black hole solutions.

Christian grew up in Fulda, Germany and Thessaloniki, Greece. He obtained a degree in church music, before he went to the University of Würzburg, where he studied for three years and received undergraduate degrees in both Mathematics and Physics. He then moved to Austin, Texas where he worked on a thesis on supermathematics resulting in his MA. After completing his PhD on twistor string theory at the University of Hannover, he held two postdoctoral positions at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and Trinity College, Dublin. His research interests include twistor geometry and integrability, noncommutative geometry and geometric quantization as well as string and M theory. He came to Edinburgh in September 2009 as an EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellow at Heriot-Watt University. He became a Lecturer in 2011.

Bernd was born in Germany. After attending the United World College of the Atlantic he studied physics and mathematics at the University of Bonn and obtained his PhD at the University of Cambridge (DAMTP). He then worked as a post doc in Durham, and Amsterdam and as an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh before joining Heriot-Watt University in September 2000. In August 2022, Bernd moved to the University of Edinburgh as Head of School of Mathematics. His research interests include topological solitons (particularly magnetic monopoles, vortices and skyrmions), quantum groups and quantum gravity in (2+1) dimensions.

Joan was born and raised in Barcelona, Spain. He obtained a BS in Physics from the University of Barcelona in 1996 and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the same university in 2000 under the supervision of Joaquim Gomis. He has held postdoctoral positions in The Weizmann Institute, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California in Berkeley. His research interests lie in the understanding of the structure of space and time, using the study of black holes and cosmological singularities in the framework of string theory, and the possible observational signatures that this theory may have in experiments.

Richard was born in Montreal, Canada and completed a Joint Honours Mathematics & Physics BSc degree at McGill University in 1990. He did his MSc and PhD degrees in Theoretical Physics at the University of British Columbia under the supervision of Gordon Semenoff. He then did postdoc stints at Oxford University in 1995 and the Niels Bohr Institute in 1998, before settling permanently at Heriot-Watt in 2000. His research centres around the applications of geometrical and topological methods to problems in quantum field theory and string theory, focusing in particular on techniques drawn from K-theory, noncommutative geometry and algebraic geometry.

Matt was born in the United States and did his undergraduate studies at the University of Notre Dame. He obtained his PhD from Johns Hopkins University (2014) and then held postdoctoral positions at Boston University (2014-17), CERN (2017-19), and EPFL (2019-22). He received a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2022 (initially held at Trinity College Dublin) and joined Heriot-Watt University in Fall 2023. Matt’s research focuses on various nonperturbative aspects of quantum field theory, including scattering, thermalization, phase transitions, and confinement, often from the perspective of the conformal bootstrap and holography.

Robert Weston was born and grew up here. He was an undergraduate at Nottingham and a graduate student at DAMTP in Cambridge. Following postdocs at Durham University and at the Université de Montreal, he arrived at Heriot-Watt University in 1998. His research interests are primarily in integrable quantum systems, both statistical-mechanical models and quantum field theories.