Dr Jessica Boland
Research Area Lead: Atoms to Devices
Dr Jessica Boland is a UKRI Future Leader Fellow and Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) of Functional Materials and Devices based at the University of Manchester. She is the director of the CUSTOM facility, which hosts a suite of scattering-type near-field microscopes enabling optoelectronic material characterisation at nanoscale length scales, sub-picosecond timescales and cryogenic temperatures.
Jessica undertook her first degree at the University of Exeter, obtaining an MPhys with Professional Experience in 2013. During this time, she worked for Hewlett Packard Labs in Bristol (now Folium Optics) and conducted her research project in the field of microwave plasmonics. She then moved to the University of Oxford in 2013 to study for her PhD under the supervision of Professor Michael Johnston. She received her DPhil in 2017 focused on ‘Terahertz Spectroscopy of Semiconductor Nanowires for Device Applications’. In November 2017, she was awarded the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt fellowship to take up a postdoctoral position at the University of Regensburg, where she utilised scattering-type near-field midinfrared microscopy to investigate the ultrafast surface carrier dynamics of topological insulators. She was appointed as a Lecturer of functional materials and devices at the University of Manchester in 2018, initially in the department of EEE before moving to Materials in 2023.
Jessica is recognised as an expert in terahertz spectroscopy and microscopy of semiconductor nanomaterials. She has been awarded a number of prizes for her research, including the IRMMW-THz Zhenyi Wang, IOP Jocelyn Bell Burnell Medal; Isambard Kingdom Brunel Award; Philip Leverhulme Prize and NPL Daphne Jackson award. Her current research focuses on combining ultrafast optical-pump terahertz-probe spectroscopy with scanning near-field optical microscopy to provide a unique tool for examining the ultrafast carrier dynamics of III-V nanostructures, 2D materials and topological insulators, providing direct feedback for their application in terahertz devices.
