Dr Jonathan Breeze

Biography

I studied Astrophysics at Leeds University, then worked at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the Quantum Metrology division as a Scientific Officer, before joining Matra-Marconi Space Systems and British-Aerospace Space Systems (now Airbus Space & Defence) as a Microwave Design Engineer. 

At Airbus I worked on a number of satellite programs as Responsible Engineer for passive microwave payloads for spacecraft payloads and conducted research into state-of-the-art passive microwave components using materials such as high temperature superconductors (HTS) and advanced microwave ceramic dielectrics.

I returned to academia to do fundamental research into microwave dielectric ceramics, culminating in a PhD on the theory and experiment of microwave absorption in single-crystal metal oxides.

I developed a microwave photonic crystal cavity with record Q-factor (600,000 at 30 GHz) that led to research into room-temperature solid-state masers.  This resulted in the first demonstration of a pulsed room-temperature maser using an optically-excited single-crystal of pentacene-doped para-terphenyl.  Subsequent research led to the observation of strong-coupling in masers and the demonstration of the first continuously-operating room-temperature solid-state maser using optically-pumped nitrogen-vacancy defects in diamond.

In 2019, I was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and the Henry Moseley Medal by the Institute of Physics.