Dr Silvia Ramos

Dr Silvia Ramos studied her degree at the University of Salamanca in Spain. She spent the last year of her degree at the University of Bristol as an Erasmus student and stayed there for her PhD (1997-2001), funded by a Marie Curie Research Fellowship and supervised by Dr G. W. Neilson. She then moved to Grenoble in France to work at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility as a post-doctoral researcher. 

In 2004 Silvia returned to the UK to work as a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Birmingham with Professor Ted Forgan. In 2008 she became a beamline scientist at Diamond Light Source, where she was part of the scientific team that built, commissioned and operated one of the X-ray spectroscopy instruments at the synchrotron. Silvia joined the School of Physics and Astronomy at Kent in 2013, taking the position of Lecturer in Materials.

Dr Silvia Ramos's research interests are mainly in the area of strongly correlated electron systems. Within this broad research area, she studies the correlation between structural and electronic properties using X-ray, neutron and muon techniques. The complementarity of the different microscopic probes available at large facilities makes them powerful tools from which much can be learnt. 

Some specific examples of areas in which Silvia is actively working at the moment are: 

• the properties of the Ruddlesden-Popper series of rhuthenate materials, iron pnictides and oxychalcogenides
• the competition between ordered states at interfaces 
• the local structure of new functional materials by XAS.
  

Silvia teaches on a number of physics modules including electromagnetism and optics and the undergraduate physics research project.