Professor Miles Padgett OBE FRS

Miles Padgett is a Royal Society Research Professor (2021–), the Society’s premier research award, and holds the Kelvin Chair of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. In 2023, he served for six months as the interim Executive Chair of EPSRC, the UK’s national research funding council for engineering and the physical sciences.
His research team explores all aspects of optics—from the fundamental behaviour of light as it pushes and twists the world around us, to the development of advanced imaging and sensing technologies. Since 2019, he has been named annually by Web of Science as a globally Highly Cited Researcher—typically one of fewer than five UK physicists to receive this recognition each year.

His leadership in research has been acknowledged through numerous national and international awards, including the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society (2019) and the Quantum Electronics Award from the IEEE Photonics Society (2021).

During his five-year term as Vice-Principal for Research at the University of Glasgow, he led a programme to strengthen research culture and support researchers in achieving excellence. Under his leadership, the university rose from the lower quartile of the Russell Group in REF 2014 to mid-table overall—and 5th for research outputs—in REF 2021. He has a deep understanding of how universities function, both as human networks and financial systems. He currently serves on the UK Committee on Research Integrity (UK CORI).

While leading EPSRC, he worked to build stronger ties across UKRI and, with support from the network of Government Chief Scientific Advisors, increased the number of funded doctoral training centres by 50%, supporting approximately 1,500 additional students.

For REF 2014, he served as a panel member for Physics and Astronomy, and in REF 2021, he was appointed Chair of the Physics Sub-Panel. He has served on numerous grant, fellowship, and award committees, including the Leverhulme Trust Research Awards Advisory Committee (covering all non-clinical disciplines). He chaired the Royal Society’s Fellowship Election Sectional Committee 2, now chairs one of its Early Career Researcher Fellowship Panels, and sits on the Society’s Nominations Committee.

Internationally, he was elected to the Board of Directors of SPIE, the leading global society for optics and photonics based in the USA. He is a member of Hong Kong’s Research Grants Committee, he chaired the Physical Sciences Committee for Hong Kong’s 2020 Research Assessment Exercise and has been invited to chair again in 2026.

Miles is committed to supporting the academic and post-academic careers of his group members.