Alan joined the Institute of Photonics in August 2002 as part of Dr David Burns’ solid-state laser engineering team. In 2005, he was awarded a 3-year personal research fellowship by the Royal Society of Edinburgh to develop his research on disk lasers and to build his own research group. He was appointed as an Associate Team Leader at the Institute in 2005 and as a Research Team Leader in 2009. In 2011, he was awarded a European Research Council Starter Grant to work on Diamond Lasers, and in 2014 he was awarded a five-year Fraunhofer UK / Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair in Laser Engineering. His research centres on the science and engineering of compact solid-state lasers – thermal management, simplified pumping arrangements, and in particular the novel use of synthetic diamond. He jointly leads the Institute’s Advanced Lasers research group with his colleague Dr Jennifer Hastie. The Compact Lasers Team, of which Alan is part, collaborates very closely with Jennifer’s High Brightness Semiconductor Disk Lasers team. In turn, the lasers group as a whole continually collaborates with other Institute staff, in particular the Photonics Materials and Devices group led by Prof. Martin Dawson. Beyond the university, the lasers group regularly collaborates with the Fraunhofer Centre for Applied Photonics, on joint projects, joint studentships and sub-contracts.

Recent research highlights include the first demonstration of a CW diamond Raman laser, of a monolithic diamond Raman laser, and of direct pumping of a Ti:sapphire laser. This has been backed up by detailed work on the exploitation of novel synthetic diamond both for thermal management in lasers and the direct use of diamond as a laser gain material in Raman lasers. The team is also now working on assessing colour-centre containing diamond as a possible gain material for broadly tuneable and ultrafast lasers.

Beyond the research councils, Alan has led both research and consultancy work funded by a number of UK and international companies. In 2009, Alan and his colleagues Walter Lubeigt and David Burns were awarded the Thales / Scottish Enterprise Scottish Technology Prize for laser engineering. Alan collaborated with M-Squared Lasers Ltd and the Fraunhofer Center for Applied Photonics on Innovate UK funded projects on diode-pumped Ti:sapphire lasers for biological imaging and lasers for quantum technologies, the later led for Strathclyde by Dr Jennifer Hastie. Alan is the academic supervisor for six doctoral students working on industrial projects: four based at the Fraunhofer Centre for Applied Photonics and two at Thales Optronics Ltd. He has collaborated closely with Element Six Ltd on the laser applications of diamond for a decade.

Alan obtained his PhD from the University of St. Andrews in 1999 for work in Dr Bruce Sinclair's group on spatial and spectral selectivity mechanisms in microchip and miniature lasers. He was then a post-doc for three years in Prof. Wilson Sibbett's group, also in St. Andrews, working on the development of compact femtosecond lasers.