Roy Sambles

Who is Roy Sambles?

John Roy Sambles, FRS is an English experimental physicist and President-elect of the Institute of Physics.

Sambles, originally from Callington in Cornwall, studied physics at Imperial College, London, gaining his BSc and PhD degrees there, and has since published over 400 papers in international journals. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May 2002.

Sambles is currently Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Exeter, he has a long and distinguished career researching the interaction of light with matter. His group at Exeter have studied a wide range of systems including: liquid crystal devices; iridescent butterfly wings; surface plasmons and microwave photonics. These studies have applications in liquid crystal displays for televisions and computer displays, highly sensitive detection of materials, and optical and microwave communication.

In 2008 he was appointed to the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.