Dr Juna Sathian, an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics, Physics & Electrical Engineering, joined Northumbria University in July 2019. She is the Head of Physics and the Group Leader of the Quantum and Molecular Photonics research group. Her research focuses on laser technology/ alexandrite ring lasers, room-temperature solid-state maser technology, and brightness-enhanced solid-state light technology/luminescent concentrators.

Dr Sathian received her PhD in Nonlinear Optics and Laser Physics from Queensland University of Technology, Australia, in Sep 2013. Her thesis entitled “Investigation of amplitude modulation contamination in electro-optic modulators”, was solving one of the serious problems of electro-optic modulator devices, a known issue in the LIGO gravitational wave detector system. She joined Imperial College London, Department of Materials as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in 2014, where she was a key researcher and co-developer of world’s first room-temperature continuous wave maser (in diamond), which has been patented and published in Nature. During this time, she worked on a high-brightness solid-state light source (LED-pumped luminescent concentrator); designed, built and wrote one of the most definitive papers on these devices and also holds a patent on this device. This solid-state light technology bridges the gap between high-cost, very elaborate laser devices and lower cost low brightness light sources (e.g. lamps, direct LED), and should play an important technological role as next-generation low-cost, high-brightness light sources in a range of future scientific, medical and industrial applications. She also worked at the Department of Physics, Imperial College London, on a project funded by Innovate-UK. The project developed novel precision wavelength-tunable diode-pumped Alexandrite laser technology in collaboration with M Squared Lasers, a premier scientific UK laser company.

She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). She is a Visiting Academic at Imperial College London and a research collaborator to the Maser Group at the Department of Materials and Photonics Group at the Department of Physics.