Robert Hoye awarded Royal Academy of Engineering Senior Research Fellowship
Robert Hoye, Associate Professor of Inorganic Chemistry, has been awarded a Senior Research Fellowship by the Royal Academy of Engineering.
This highly-prestigious scheme enables Prof. Hoye to work in collaboration with the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory for five years to develop a new X-ray detector technology from his laboratory towards commercialisation.
Seeing inside the human body with X-rays has revolutionised the provision of high-quality medical care, for example in detecting cancer. But taking an X-ray (e.g. a CT scan) exposes the patient to high levels of radiation.
Recently, Prof. Hoye’s group showed that a material they were working on for solar cells, bismuth oxyiodide (BiOI), was capable of detecting X-ray doses 100 times better than the current state-of-the-art detectors. This can make medical imaging safer and faster, and the project aims to scale-up this technology to realise its benefits in society.
The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus just south of Oxford, is part of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). This project brings together the materials chemistry expertise of Prof. Hoye with the device engineering capabilities of the Detector Development Group at the STFC. The project will not only push forward BiOI from demonstration devices to commercial imagers, but also strengthen the University of Oxford’s links with the STFC.
Read more on the proof-of-concept work on BiOI X-ray detectors here. The next round of Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chairs and Senior Research Fellowships will open for applications later in May.
