Rate My Professor Judith Driscoll

Professor Judith Driscoll FRS FREng is Professor of Materials Science at the University of Cambridge in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, where she holds the Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Materials. She earned a BSc (Eng) from Imperial College London and a PhD in Materials Science from the University of Cambridge in 1991. Her career trajectory includes an IBM Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University and IBM Almaden Research Center from 1991 to 1995, Governor’s Lecturer and Reader in Materials Chemistry at Imperial College from 1995 to 2003, Reader in Materials Science at Cambridge from 2003 to 2008, and Professor of Materials Science since 2008. She has been a Fellow of Trinity College since 2005 and a long-term Visiting Staff Member at Los Alamos National Laboratory since 2003.

Driscoll's research specializes in the nanoscale design and tuning of functional oxide thin film materials for energy-efficient electronic applications, including memristors, ferroelectric HfO2-based devices, high-temperature superconductors, and neuromorphic hardware. Leading the Driscoll Research Group, she utilizes advanced techniques such as pulsed laser deposition with RHEED control, high-temperature oxide sputtering, and spatial ALD to fabricate and characterize devices at nanometre scales. Her innovations have advanced high-performance superconductor tapes, ferroics, ionics, and semiconductors with industrial impact. Notable publications include 'Engineering High Endurance in WO3-based Resistive Switching Devices Via a Novel Guided Filament Approach' (Science Advances, 2025), 'HfO2-based memristive synapses with asymmetrically extended p-n heterointerfaces for highly energy-efficient neuromorphic hardware' (Science Advances, 2026), 'Ultrafast non-volatile resistive switching devices with over 512 distinct and stable levels' (Advanced Functional Materials, 2025), and over 350 papers total. She served as Founding Editor-in-Chief of APL Materials from 2013 to 2023 and has received major awards including Fellowship of the Royal Society (2025), Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng), Royal Society of Chemistry Interdisciplinary Award (2024), Armourers and Brasiers' Company Prize (2015), and fellowships from APS, MRS, IOP, IOM3, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Driscoll promotes women in science through Femincam (founded 2023) and WISPER symposium (2025).