Rate My Professor Tim Birks

Professor Tim Birks is Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics at the University of Bath. His research focuses on light propagation along optical fibres and designing fibres so that light travels in new and unusual ways. This includes tapered fibres, photonic crystal fibres, hollow-core fibres, photonic lanterns, multicore fibres, and applications in astrophotonics. He leads experimental work using fibre drawing towers and tapering rigs, supported by theory and simulations. Birks is best known for pioneering microstructured optical fibres, including hollow-core varieties. His group's efforts target curiosity-driven exploration and practical uses in optical telecommunications, biomedical sensing and imaging, novel light sources, and astronomical instrumentation. With over 61,400 citations on Google Scholar, his contributions have profoundly impacted the field of fibre optics. He was elected a Fellow of Optica in 2008 for his work. Birks teaches linear photonics in the PH40086 Photonics unit and has previously delivered courses on general relativity without tensors (PH30101), Fourier analysis, and statistical mechanics.

Recent key publications include 'Measuring the number of modes guided by multi-mode hollow core fibres' (2026, Optics Express, vol. 34, pp. 6260-6275), 'Perspective: Hollow Core Optical Fibres for Ultraviolet and Visible Wavelengths' (2026, Advanced Science), 'Highly multi-mode hollow core fibers' (2025, Optics Express, vol. 33, pp. 25669-25677), 'Mode counting in multimode anti-resonant hollow core fibres' (2025, CLEO/Europe-EQEC), and 'Multimode Imaging with Hollow-Core Fibres' (2025, CLEO/Europe-EQEC). His research extends to collaborations on projects like ultraviolet beam delivery and precision astronomical spectrographs. Birks contributes to interdisciplinary initiatives such as MicroTex as Optical Fibre Technology Theme Lead and u-Care management team.