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Tim Birks

Biography

Tim Birks arrived at the University of Bath in 1996 and is now a Professor in the Physics Department. He started his PhD on tapered optical fibres at the University of Southampton in 1986 and completed it at the University of Limerick in Ireland in 1990. These studies have been a good platform for understanding the formation and optical properties of fibre transitions, and the design and operation of waveguides with large contrasts in refractive index.

Since 1994 he has been a pioneer of one such waveguide, the photonic crystal fibre, developing the original fabrication techniques while a postdoc back at the University of Southampton. (Indeed he was the first person ever employed to work on PCFs.) His work at that time was recognised by the award of a Royal Society University Research Fellowship.

Current interests include the post-processing of PCFs and understanding their guidance mechanisms, as well as continuing to find new applications for tapered conventional fibres. He was a co-founder of the spin-out company BlazePhotonics Ltd, which made key advances in the development of PCFs until its closure in 2004. He has co-authored over 160 papers in peer-reviewed international journals and conferences.

He also teaches undergraduates within the Department of Physics.

He was elected Fellow of the Optical Society of America in 2007.