Dr Tim Hele

Research positions

Proleptic Lecturer and Royal Society University Research Fellow, University College London (July 2020-present)

• Independent Lecturer (i.e. Assistant Professor) position with complete research freedom, focussing on the design of highly efficient organic light-emitting diodes
• Royal Society University Research Fellowship provides very substantial funding, limits on teaching and administrative commitments and networking opportunities with other Royal Society URFs.
• Lecturing third year course Quantum Mechanical Methods in Computational Chemistry. Also teaching second year physical chemistry.
• Various research collaborations including with Dr Emrys Evans at Swansea University.

CHAMPS Postdoctoral Research Associate, Universities of Bristol and Leeds (April - July 2020)

• Research position with the Chemistry And Mathematics in Phase Space initiative (CHAMPS), centered at Bristol University.
• Seconded to Leeds University to research as part of the group of Professor Dmitry Shalashilin.
• Research focuses on quantum dynamics and electronic structure theory.

Visitor, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge (2017-2020)

• Collaborative optoelectronics research with the group of Prof Sir Richard Friend.
• Highlights include showing how the mechanism of singlet fission can be profoundly affected by solvent and excitation energy (JACS, 2019) and showing how OLED emission colour could be tuned by simply changing the host material and not the chromophore (Adv. Funct. Mater., 2020).

Research Fellowship, University of Cambridge (2014-2019)

• Independent academic position, providing three years’ funding and accommodation to research in any branch of the sciences.
• Selected for one position from 87 applicants
• During 2014-2015 I collaborated with the Althorpe Group in the Cambridge University Chemistry department, deriving Matsubara dynamics and showing how this was related to RPMD, CMD and TRPMD.
• From 2015-2017 I intermitted the Fellowship to research at Cornell.
• Upon my return to Cambridge in September 2017 I moved to the Cavendish Laboratories to research chromophore design and optoelectronics with the group of Prof Sir Richard Friend.

Postdoctoral Associate, Cornell University, USA (Sep 2015- Jul 2017)

• Intermitted Research Fellowship to research in the group of Prof Nandini Ananth at Cornell University.
• Researched non-adiabatic dynamics, singlet fission and chromophore design.

Education

PhD (Theoretical Chemistry), Trinity College, University of Cambridge (2011-2014)

• Supervised by Prof. Stuart Althorpe
• Derived a unique Quantum Transition-State Theory which had been claimed not to exist since 1939.
• Dissertation on arxiv, and available as PDF.

MChem (Chemistry) 1st Class, Exeter College, University of Oxford (2007-2011)

• Highest overall mark in the University of Oxford.
• Fourth year research project supervised by Prof. David Manolopoulos FRS, developing non-adiabatic Ring-Polymer Molecular Dynamics. Thesis on arxiv.
• Highest mark in University for 3rd year (Part IB) exams.
• Highest mark in University for 2nd year (Part IA) exams.
• Fifth equal (out of 197) in University for 1st year (Preliminary) exams.
• Supplementary subjects taken: History and Philosophy of Science (2011), Distinction; Quantum Chemistry (2010), Distinction; Aromatic and Heterocyclic Chemistry (2009), Distinction.

Awards, prizes, and funding