About Luke

Luke has been carrying out NMR experiments since his PhD days at the University of Warwick, UK.  He came to Australia via Canada, including three years working at the Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences in Ottawa, and started at Deakin as a Senior Lecturer in 2012.  He is interested in both the application of NMR to solve problems in materials science, and in the development of new NMR tools and techniques.  While his main expertise lies in solid-state NMR spectroscopy, he is currently branching out into solution-state NMR, imaging, dynamic nuclear polarisation and EPR, all of which fit under the umbrella of “magnetic resonance”.  He spends much of his spare time baking bread, brewing beer and rolling pasta dough.

Luke has over 70 publications, including several book chapters and invited reviews, and two cover articles.  He has recently given invited talks at international conferences in Japan, Europe and the USA.  In 2016 he was part of a successful ARC LIEF grant to purchase Australia’s first dynamic nuclear polarisation (DNP) spectrometer.

Luke has developed several collaborations, working closely with the following:

• Ionic liquid electrolytes with Prof Michael Deschamps (University of Orleans, France)
• Solid-state NMR of supramolecular complexes with A/Prof Fred Pfeffer (Deakin)
• Development of ¹⁴N solid-state NMR with Prof Robert Schurko (University of Windsor, Canada)
• DNP NMR with Dr Marc-Antoine Sani (University of Melbourne)
• Radical-containing polymers with Dr Haritz Sardon (Polymat, Spain)

Luke leads the Electromaterials NMR sub-group and co-supervises several PhD students. Luke also helps to run the Deakin NMR Facility and acts as an HDR Coordinator in the Institute for Frontier Materials.