Hannah Stern

I am a Royal Society University Research Fellow, leading a research team based in the Photon Science Institute at the University of Manchester (as of January 2024) and, previously, at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, UK. 

My team's research is motivated by the fact that new materials have always been the bearer of new technologies. We study how materials interact with light and how to harness and engineer their excited state behaviour to build future technologies such as quantum optical networks and quantum sensors.

In general, my interest lies in exploring the fundamental photophysics of novel magneto-optical materials. My PhD work involved the development of solar panels made from organic semiconductors. As a Junior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, I branched out to use atomically-thin materials for biomarker detection. My most recent work involves the identification of a room-temperature single spin qubit in a two-dimensional material, for quantum networks and quantum sensing.

I also have a keen interest to communicate my science to a general audience, and to link fundamental research to commercial developments. For further details see the  Media and Entrepreneurship link on my web page. 

I completed a PhD (Physics) at Cambridge University under the supervision of Sir Professor Richard Friend. I have a Bachelor of Science (First Class Honours) in Chemistry from Otago University, New Zealand.