Dr Calum MacCormick

Professional biography

I began my research career at the University of Sussex where I performed experiments on Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) for my DPhil. After Sussex, I continued my BEC research at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where I helped develop a useful optical trapping technique, especially suited to dynamic experiments with BEC. I came to the Open University in 2008 to work with Silvia Bergamini on her new ultra-cold Rydberg atoms project. I continue to work on Rydberg atoms - at present we are trying to further cool our optically trapped atoms using a technique known as "gray molasses", in which promises to achieve very cold final temperatures.

Teaching interests

Most of my OU teaching concerns Quantum mechanics, and I was excited to introduce the topic of quantum computing to our 3rd level teaching (SM380 Quantum Physics). I am presently chairing our new masters level course, SM880, now in it's second year of presentation.