Dr Clara Barker is a Daphne Jackson Fellow in the Department of Materials at the Centre for Applied Superconductivity at the University of Oxford.

Clara is a highly skilled materials chemist achieving a first-class degree in electronic and electrical engineering at the Manchester Metropolitan University. Following a few months in her graduate role, she was invited to undertake a PhD at the Manchester Metropolitan University because of the achievements obtained during her degree.

Clara became an expert in thin film deposition and helped set up an HIPIMS deposition research facility at Empa – Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology.

Clara is the Dean for equality and diversity at Linacre College and sat as Chair of the LGBT+ advisory group at Oxford University for until 2022. In 2018 she won the first diversity role model award from the University. She is a member of the both the Royal Society and the Girls School Association E&D committees. In her spare time, Clara runs a youth group for LGBTI+ people, with a support group for their parents. She is the recipient of the Points of Light Award from the UK Prime Minister in 2018, has written for various publications, delivered many talks on LGBTI+ issues and diversity in academia, including a TEDx talk in 2018, (https://youtu.be/cReiIVsgNGs)  and was highlighted in Nature in early 2021 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00024-z . She also plays D&D and reviews board games on her YouTube channel.

Returning to her research after a break of seven years, Clara’s project is titled: Next-generation superconducting thin-films for quantum devices with off-line quality assessment

Due to finish in 2024, this Fellowship is sponsored by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Watch Clara’s video Chapter 6: Dr Clara Barker – YouTube, that was released alongside this book: https://engineers-making-a-difference.com/