Prof. David J. Birch

David Birch is Professor of Photophysics at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. He has published over 200 journal papers, mainly on fluorescence lifetime spectroscopy. His present research includes fluorescence studies of molecular dynamics and structure down to the single molecule level, nanoparticles, melanin structure and photophysics, fibril formation and metabolic sensing.

David studied physics at the University of Manchester where he obtained his PhD for research on diphenylpolyene fluorescence under the supervision of the late John B Birks. After holding a lectureship at Manchester he worked on high-resolution organic mass spectrometry with VG Micromass Ltd. He subsequently moved to Strathclyde University where he was appointed Professor of Photophysics in 1993. David was Head of Department from 2004-10, a period preceding and including 2.5 years of the Government-led REF 2014 assessment period in which the Department was ranked 1st for research quality across all UK university physics departments.

External appointments include, in 1999 the Sir C V Raman Endowment Visiting Chair at the University of Madras, in 2000 a Visiting Professorship at Kyoto Institute of Technology and, from 2002, the Visiting Chair of Applied Physics at the Czech Technical University, Prague. In 2014 he was appointed to the Green Honors Chair in Physics at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. He has held research fellowships from the Royal Society, the Nuffield Foundation and the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science. He is a founding Director of Horiba Jobin Yvon IBH Ltd, a Fellow of Scotland’s National Academy and a member of the Permanent Steering Committee of the Methods and Applications in Fluorescence conference series. He was Editor in Chief of Measurement Science and Technology from 2012-2016, is presently co-founding Editor in Chief of Methods and Applications in Fluorescence, and has been a member of the Editorial Board of JBO since its launch.