{"id":140,"date":"2018-11-05T09:58:40","date_gmt":"2018-11-05T09:58:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/?p=140"},"modified":"2018-11-05T10:02:25","modified_gmt":"2018-11-05T10:02:25","slug":"professor-chris-phillips-professor-of-experimental-solid-state-physics-physics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/2018\/11\/05\/professor-chris-phillips-professor-of-experimental-solid-state-physics-physics\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor Chris Phillips, Professor of Experimental Solid State Physics, Physics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-141\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/files\/2018\/11\/180824_phillips_chris_018-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I got my PhD in this very Physics department, in the early days of pulsed lasers and developing the internet. <!--more-->After a spell travelling, and working for the BBC, I got a lectureship here at Imperial in 1985. Apart from the odd year in California, I\u2019ve been here ever since, becoming a professor in 2000.<\/p>\n<p>Much of my research has been with nanostructured semiconductors but along the way I learnt\u00a0new ways of making and using mid-infrared light, and lately I\u2019ve been exploiting this knowledge for medical applications. Clinical trials with our \u201cDigistain\u201d, mid-IR cancer biopsy imaging instrument have proved it to be very effective in diagnosing Breast Cancer early on and with increased confidence. It is well on the way to commercial exploitation.<\/p>\n<p>Working at the physics\/life science interface also helped me realise how we could adapt some of the nano-imaging methods developed by solid state physicists to make a new microscope that can look inside cells. Now we can see the tiny organelles inside a cell optically for the first time. The spatial resolution, ~8nm, beats the Abbe resolution limit by 1200x and we think it has the potential to augment, or even replace, electron microscopy right across the biosciences.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve always loved science, and refused to believe that it should be the preserve of \u201civory-tower\u201d types. All through my career I\u2019ve made time for appearances at schools and science shows all over the world. My demo-laden and occasionally hazardous lecturing style has drawn many a comment, and even the odd award! I\u2019ve also made numerous TV, radio and newspaper appearances, and once went live on BBC\u2019s newsnight to explain opto-electronics research to Jeremy Paxman\u2019s multi-million strong audience. It was terrifying, but definitely worth it.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-143\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/files\/2018\/11\/180824_phillips_chris_001-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got my PhD in this very Physics department, in the early days of pulsed lasers and developing the internet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1220,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1220"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions\/145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs-staging.imperial.ac.uk\/imperial-people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}