Neil Collings

Neil Collings
Executive Editor
Division of Electrical Engineering
Cambridge University, UK

Biography

Neil Collings was born in Stalybridge, England, in 1949. He received a B.A. Honours degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University in 1971, and a Ph.D. degree in Physics from Salford University in 1977. He was appointed Principal Research Engineer at STC Technology Ltd. in 1985, where he was responsible for programmes to build optical correlators and to develop ferroelectric liquid crystal SLMs. He moved to the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland in 1990 to take charge of NSF programmes in Optical Neural Networks, and Nonlinear Semiconductor Devices. He worked on two European collaborations, one to construct an optical correlator with photorefractive memory, and the second to construct systems based on optical MEMS. He later took responsibility for a Swiss industry/university collaboration in Liquid Crystal Devices for Optronic Systems. In 1999 he took up his current research position in the Engineering Dept of the University of Cambridge, working on Liquid Crystal Device development and Optical System design, with particular emphasis on SLMs, optical switches, and 3D display. Dr. Collings is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics.