Winners of Faculty Teaching Award announced

The faculty is delighted to be able to announce the winners of the MAPS Faculty Teaching Awards 2013.  The panel received a strong field of nominations for two categories.

The winners are as follows:

Academic Staff category: Professor Tony Harker (Physics & Astronomy)

Postgraduate Teaching Assistant: Mr Dominic Reeve (Physics & Astronomy)

Our congratulations and thanks to them for the work they have put in to deliver an exceptional learning experience for our students.

Tony Harker

Tony Harker, who retired from UCL this summer, was at UCL from 1995 to 2013 as a member both of the Physics and Astronomy department and the London Centre for Nanotechnology.

His research involved modelling the behaviour of materials at a range of length scales, looking at quantum and classical effects. He has lectured on Waves & Optics and Solid State Physics, but recently has been more involved in teaching computer programming and numerical simulation.

When one of his modules, originally written for Theoretical Physics students, was also offered to Natural Science students with interests in the Life Sciences one of the biggest challenges was to devise a suitable range of mini-projects for the course. Modelling magnetic systems or the growth of crystals would no longer do. "That year", he says, "I learnt more about the nervous system of the giant squid than any physicist ought to know."

"One of the greatest rewards is seeing a student who began a project with very little confidence blossom and turn in a first-rate piece of work. That makes you feel you've really achieved something."

Related links

• Tony Harker
• Dominic Reeve