Do The Math

The Age

Wednesday September 17, 2008

Paul Edwards

I'VE moved from a well-paid but not terribly exciting job in finance to a less-well-paid research role in the new and very exciting field of physical nanotechnology, which I find much more interesting and fun.

After crossing the Tasman, I am employed as a postdoctoral researcher in the school of applied physics at RMIT.

We're studying the self-assembly of metallic nanoclusters - clusters of small numbers of atoms - on surfaces. If we find out what it's all about, maybe our scientific and engineering colleagues here will then be able to create nanostructures.

This is all a long way from where I started, with a bachelor's degree at the University of Otago in Dunedin.

After graduating, I decided to embark on an actuarial career, because I believed that actuaries were paid lots of money to do maths.

I became an actuarial student at National Mutual Life Insurance (now AXA New Zealand) in Wellington, working in life insurance while studying by distance education to become a qualified actuary.

I carried out a variety of insurance and actuarial work including life policy administration, software development, actuarial valuation of defined benefit superannuation schemes, group life policy valuation and pricing, profitability monitoring and reporting, and life insurance policy pricing and development.

During this time I got hitched and started a family. I also had a bit of a midlife crisis and decided that I would like to reinvent myself as some sort of applied mathematician and do research.

Therefore I left AXA and headed back to university (Victoria University of Wellington) to upgrade my mathematics skills, with the aim of getting a PhD.

At this stage I was delighted to discover the MacDiarmid Institute of Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. I inquired about doing some applied mathematics in the nanotechnology area, and was offered a scholarship from Industrial Research Ltd (IRL) to do a PhD. This was fantastic as I could now use my maths and computer skills to do nanotechnology research.

The main focus of my PhD research was developing a novel computational method for simulation in epitaxial growth of crystals.

Epitaxial growth is the process of growing crystals one atomic layer at a time. This is very important in the production of semiconductor electronic chips. These chips are the key components of the electronic devices that pervade our lives.

The advantage of the new method is that simulations are faster while still effectively maintaining the level of detail. This means that for a given quantity of computer resources, you can have more, bigger or longer timescale simulations than would otherwise be possible.

Now I have been given the wonderful opportunity of researching my subject at RMIT.

The relocation was a big change for all the family and we are still coming to terms with it. But in many ways Melbourne is like a bigger, brighter Wellington - without the wind.

Central to my work is the fact that many natural occurrences - for instance the growth of crystals from solution - use self-assembly processes. Therefore it's a good strategy to take advantage of these processes where we can.

If you're wondering what the purpose of it all is, metallic nanoclusters and nanostructures have varied optical and electronic properties depending on their size, shape and composition.

They therefore have great potential as components in the coming generation of electronic and optical devices which are being fabricated at the nanoscale. -- PAUL EDWARDS

CV

Born 1958.

Education 1977-81 Otago University BSc (Hons) Mathematics; 1999 Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia (FIAA); 2003-04 Victoria University of Wellington bridging papers; 2004-07 Victoria University of Wellington PhD Program in Physics.

Jobs 2008 post-doctoral researcher in School of Applied Sciences (Physics) RMIT; 2007 research assistant, Victoria University of Wellington; 2003 part-time tutor, Victoria University of Wellington; 1983-2002 actuarial roles, AXA/National Mutual New Zealand Life Insurance.

Career low Being stuck on a problem, until realising that false assumptions were the root cause of the difficulty.

Career high Getting our paper on nanocluster bouncing published in peer-reviewed literature.

Unwinding Reading a good book while consuming lots of tea and chocolate.

© 2008 The Age

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