Mike Weir

Mike (pronouns: he/him) was educated at Ernesford Grange School in Coventry, before moving on to the University of Nottingham where he obtained a 1st Class M.Sci. degree in Physics (2006), and The University of Sheffield to complete a Ph.D. in Polymer Physics under the supervision of Professor Richard A. L. Jones FRS (2010). He has since held positions at the Bragg Institute (now known as the Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering) of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, and the materials science publishing team at Elsevier Ltd., before his return The University of Sheffield to undertake post-doctoral work in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. In 2020 Mike was awarded a Nottingham Research Fellowship in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Nottingham, as part of the Propulsion Futures Beacon of Excellence.

From 2017-2020 he was working on a research project with Professor Richard A. L. Jones FRS. The project developed optoelectronically active thin films, coatings and nanocomposites. This work was undertaken in collaboration with Professor Anthony J. Ryan OBE in the Department of Chemistry, and Dr. Akshay Rao, Professor Neil Greenham and Professor Sir Richard Friend in the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge.

From 2013-2017 he worked on a research project exploring polymer-graphene nanocomposites in a collaboration with Durham University. This research was funded by the EPSRC grant nicknamed ‘GRAPOL‘. The work was carried out under the supervision of Professor Nigel Clarke, Professor of Condensed Matter Theory.

Mike is the Treasurer of Inspiration for Life, a small charity with close ties to The University of Sheffield. The charity promotes lifelong learning and the public understanding of science, while raising money for cancer charities, and produces the annual 24 Hour Inspire lecture marathon.