Career Advancement Group
The role of the Careers Advancement Group (CAG) is to guide the UK Metamaterials Network to develop future leaders; to negotiate career obstacles; and to integrate career advancement across the UK Metamaterials Network.
Maria Rosaria Marsico
M.R.Marsico@exeter.ac.uk
Maria Rosaria Marsico is an Associate Professor of Structural Dynamics in the Department of Engineering at the University of Exeter, UK. She received her Ph.D. in Structural Engineering in 2008 from the University of Naples Federico II, in collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley. She previously worked as a Research Assistant in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bristol, UK, focusing on structural instability and substructure testing.
Her research explores sustainable and innovative materials, with a particular emphasis on developing smart elastomers for applications in construction, aerospace, infrastructure, and the defence sector. She has secured EPSRC Knowledge Exchange Impact Accelerator Account (IAA) funding and a UKRI Research England Innovation Platform for Collaboration award to support industry engagement and partnership development. This work has led to two filed patents that underpin her current research activities.
Rola Saad
r.saad@sheffield.ac.uk / r.saad@ucl.ac.uk
Rola Saad is currently a Lecturer for University College London, prior to this role she worked as a University Teacher in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering since completing my PhD degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Sheffield in 2019.
Prior to her PhD, Rola obtained her MSc degree with distinction from the University of Glamorgan. Her first degree was a BEng in Electrical Engineering, Communications and Electronics, which was awarded at a GPA of 89.3% from Beirut Arab University (BAU).
Rola is also an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a member of the IEEE, IEEE Women in Engineering, and Women’s Engineering Society. Outside of her teaching and research activities, she is active within equality, diversity and inclusion work in the department, and is lead coordinator for the department’s annual Girls into Electronics event. Rola also represents the department on the University of Sheffield’s race equality group.
William Wardley
W.Wardley@exeter.ac.uk
William is currently a post-doctoral research fellow with a particular interest in the design, fabrication and characterisation of photonic and plasmonic nanostructure. William is currently working on two projects, SCOLED and META4D. SCOLED is a EU-funded project looking at improving the efficiency of organic LEDs via nanophotonic effects, particularly strong coupling, and nanostructuring, with partners across Europe. META4D is an EPSRC-funded project between multiple UK institutions exploring both the fundamental physics of time-varying metamaterials and their real-world applications.
William’s main research activities include the design and fabrication of metallic nanostructure, using nanofabrication techniques, as well as the design and use of optical characterisation tools, including home built spectroscopy syetems and ultrafast measurements for investigating phenomena in the visible and THz spectral ranges.
He completed his PhD at King’s College London, on the fabrication and characterisation of plasmonic metamaterials for the UV. Following this he was a post-doc for 18 months in the photonics and nanotechnology group at KCL, continuing my work on UV plasmonics and working on the fabrication of nanostructures and metamaterials on alternate substrates, such as the end of an optical fibre or the curved surface of a lens. Following this, he moved to the Natural and Artificial Photonic Structures group, at the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory in Braga, Portugal. There he worked on bio-derived and bio-inspired photonic structures, such as iridescent chloroplasts found in begonia leaves and nanoporous silica exoskeletons of diatom micro-algae.