Dr Paul Donaldson

Paul is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the CLF and R&D group leader, who first joined STFC-Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in 2012. Prior to starting an R&D group at CLF-ULTRA, Paul began his career at RAL as a beamline scientist for Diamond Light Source 2012-13. He continued as an operations scientist for the CLF-ULTRA facility (2013-19). From 2007-12, he held postdoctoral research positions at the University of Zurich and Imperial College London.

Paul's scientific education began in 1994 at the University of Edinburgh. He graduated in 1999 with a Masters in Chemical Physics and undertook work towards a PhD in Rb Bose Condensation at the University of Sussex (1999-2001). He took a break from science by working as a lecturer in the English department of the (then) Anhui University of Technology and Science in Wuhu, China (2002-3). On return to science, he undertook an MRes in Chemical Biology at Imperial College London (2003-4). Paul wrote his PhD thesis in Ultrafast Laser Spectroscopy applied to peptides and proteins at Imperial College London (2004-7). He also worked as a part-time lecturer at the Royal College of Arts (2005-8).