News

Doctoral Supervision Award to member of Staff

(1 October 2012)

Prof. P. D. Hatton

Peter Hatton has been awarded one of the University Doctoral Supervision awards in 2012. In his career at both Edinburgh and Durham he has helped over twenty doctoral research students complete their PhD’s, twelve of who are still active researchers and academics, including eight Professors. In many cases he continues to work with his ex-students many years after they left Durham.

He was nominated for the award by two of his recent PhD students Roger Johnson (now a postdoctoral research fellow at Oxford) and Stewart Bland (Editor of the Elsevier journal Materials Today). In their nomination they commented “Professor Hatton has always shown an outstanding interest in his student’s work, and is keen to join his team on experiments regardless of the large amount of travel and energy the projects invariably demand. Despite substantial teaching and departmental commitments, Peter has always prioritised his student’s research. He is happy to work late into the night on experiments and proposals to guarantee that his students are able to collect the finest results and that submitted proposals are as strong as possible. Without this level of commitment his students would no doubt not have reached the high standards that set Peter’s research group ahead of others in his field. Peter’s door is always open, and he is happy for his students to approach him with any question or concern. From first joining the group, Peter immediately regards his students as peers, and treats them with the commensurate level of respect. From an early stage Professor Hatton encourages his students to consider how they would like to develop their careers. Peter invests a significant amount of his time and resources on preparing his students for their time after a PhD. Professor Hatton encourages the submission of papers and proposals, and sends all of his students on numerous international training courses and conferences. As a result, his students are given the opportunity to practice and demonstrate a number of widely applicable skills, and build strong social and working relationships with researchers from around the world.”

Peter Hatton has previously been the recipient of a Sir James Knott Research Fellowship, awarded to leading Durham researchers, and also an Excellence in Teaching award. His award is the first for excellence in doctoral supervision to a member of the Physics Department. From 2012 he will be, appropriately, the new Departmental chair of the Departmental Postgraduate Studies Committee and the Postgraduate Staff Student Consultative Committee.