Miles Padgett is a Royal Society Research Professor (2021 –), the Society's premier research award, and hold the Kelvin Chair of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. For six months in 2023 he was the interim Executive chair of EPSRC, the UK’s national research funding council for the engineering and physical sciences.
His research team covers all things optical, from the way light behaves as it pushes and twists the world around us to the application of new techniques in imaging and sensing systems. His research group has published over 400 papers, the details of which and article-level metrics are found here. Since 2019 he has been named each year by Web of Science as a globally highly cited researcher (article-level, metrics), one of typically fewer than 5 UK physicists named each year.
His research leadership has been recognised by national and international prizes including, in 2019, the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society and in 2021 the Quantum Electronics Award from the IEEE Photonics Society.
During his 5-year term as Vice-Principal for Research at the University of Glasgow, his team led a programme to strengthen research culture to allow more researchers to excel. From being in the lower quartile of the Russell Group in REF 2014, Glasgow rose to mid table (and 5th for outputs) in REF 2021. He understands how Universities work, both as a human network and as a financial operation. He is now a member of the UK Committee on Research Integrity (UK CORI).
During his six months leading EPSRC through building stronger ties across UKRI and supported by the network of Government Chief Scientific Advisors, he increased the number of funded doctoral training centres by 50% (+≈1,500 students).
For REF 2014, he was a panel member for Physics and Astronomy and in 2021 was appointed as the physics sub-panel chair. Miles has served on many grant, fellowship, and award committees, including the Leverhulme Trust Research Awards Advisory Committee (covering all non-clinical subjects). He chaired the fellowship election sectional committee 2 of the Royal Society, now chairs the Society's career researcher fellowship panel and sit on their nominations committee. Internationally he was elected to the Board of Directors of SPIE, the leading international society for optics and photonics, chaired the physical sciences committee of the Hong Kong 2020 research assessment exercise and has been invited to chair again in 2026.
Miles celebrates the academic and post-academic careers of group members.
Awards
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Rumford Medal
For world leading research on optical orbital momentum including an angular form of the Einstein-Padolsky-Rosen paradox.
