David Hutchinson (physicist)

Born in England in 1969, Hutchinson completed a BSc at the University of Exeter, UK, and received a PhD degree there in 1994 in the area of theoretical physics.[1] He also holds a PGDip(Arts) in Philosophy from the University of Otago.[2] He moved to New Zealand in 2000, and became a full citizen in February 2015.[1]

Hutchinson held postdoctoral research fellowships at Dublin City University, Ireland, and then at Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario.[3] He was Lecturer in Physics at Somerville College, University of Oxford in the UK from 1997 to 2000.[3] After visiting the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand during a Royal Society of London Study Visit in 1998, he moved to Dunedin in 2000 to take up a lectureship position at the university.[3] He was promoted to senior lecturer in 2003, then associate professor, and in February 2015 became a full professor.[1][3] In 2004 he was the first recipient of Otago University's Rowheath Trust Award and Carl Smith Medal, for outstanding research performance by an early-career researcher.[3][4] He attended the annual World Economic Forum "Meeting of New Champions" in Tianjin (2008) and Dalian (2009), selected as "one of the world's 60 outstanding young scientists"; the attendees went on to form the Global Young Academy in Berlin in 2010, of which Hutchinson is an alumnus.[5][4][6]

Hutchinson was a member of the Jack Dodd Centre for Quantum Technology at Otago's Department of Physics, and served as the Director from 2010 to 2015, except for a period in 2012 when he was a visiting professor at the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore. On 1 January 2015 he became director of the newly-founded Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies, a Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE).[7] Hosted by the University of Otago, the Dodd-Walls centre is composed of approximately 200 researchers and students from six New Zealand universities: Otago University, the University of Auckland, Victoria University of Wellington, AUT, Massey University, and the University of Canterbury.[8][9]

Hutchinson is a practitioner of education outreach, giving regular talks in schools and community organisations. In 2017 he was one of a team of science educators, including Ian Griffin and Amadeo Enriquez-Ballestero, who visited the Chatham Islands to work with school pupils.[10][11] He has participated in several marae-based Science Wānanga and worked with the Lab in a Box programme around New Zealand.[12] In 2018 Hutchinson was Visiting Fellow at Merton College, Oxford.

He has been a member of the Trust Board of the Otago Museum since 2008 and took over as chair of the Board after the death of Graham Crombie in 2019.[2][13] He is a fellow and past president of the New Zealand Institute of Physics, and former president of the Otago Institute, the Royal Society Te Apārangi's Otago-Southland branch.[14][2] He is also an elected fellow of the UK's Institute of Physics.[2]

In 2022 Hutchinson was awarded the Royal Society Te Apārangi's Thomson Medal, for "establishing and developing the Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies, advocating for early career researchers and developing outreach partnerships through the museum sector".[15]

Hutchinson is a theoretical physicist, specialising in quantum systems and ultra-cold atomic gases.[2] Specifically, he examines the effects of disorder in Bose-Einstein condensates (systems first created in 1995, and at University of Otago since 1998, which form at close to absolute zero).[3] He has also worked on understanding energy transport on the FMO complex found in deep-sea bacteria which rely on infrared photons, and its possible implications for producing more efficient solar photovoltaic panels.[16]

• Profile at the University of Otago
• Profile at the Global Young Academy