Professor David Wright

C David Wright obtained a B.Sc. with first class honours in Physics from Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, an M.Sc. in Solid State Physics from the University of Sheffield, and a Ph.D. in Perpendicular Magnetic Recording from Manchester (CNAA). He worked as a Process Engineer for Philips Electronics in Manchester, before taking up a faculty appointment in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Manchester. He moved to Exeter to take up the Chair in Electronic and Computer Engineering in 1999..

Professor Wright’s research centres on the development of (i) future generation, non-volatile, memory and computing devices and technologies, and (ii) active optical metasurfaces for the control of light from the UV to the THz.

A recent emphasis has been on (i) the incorporation of advanced functionality into memory devices, in particular demonstration of their ability to perform arithmetic and logic processing, as well as mimic neuronal and synaptic systems of the brain, and (ii) the development of chalcogenide phase-change metasurfaces for applications such as LIDAR, multispectral imaging, optical computing and more.

Professor Wright is also heavily involved in the development of research strategy, at the UK, European and international level.

He led the UK Government (DTI) funded Data Storage Network, led the EU's Special Strategic Action on memory technology, was part of the team that carried out a strategic review of the EU's flagship nanoelectronics programmes - the ENIAC & ARETMIS JTIs that accounted for over €3 billion of EU spending.

Professor Wright led the €4 million H2020 project Fun-COMP (www.fun-comp.org), that brought together leading EU university groups (Oxford, Muenster, C2N-CNRS) and industrial researchers (IBM, Thales, IMEC) to develop new fast, low-power approaches to computing using integrated photonics techniques. Fun-COMP is now being followed by the PHOENICS project (https://phoenics-project.eu/) that aims to produce a completely integrated photonic 'computer' for AI processing. Prof Wright also leads the EPSRC's APT-NuCOM project which, with partners from Southampton, Oxford and Microsoft, is developing metamaterial approaches to optical computing. He is also a key partner in a major EPSRC Centre-to-Centre project that brings together Exeter's Centre for Metamaterial Reseach and Innovation (CMRI) and the NSF Centre for Metamaterials in the USA to develop new metamaterarial based concepts for sensing, modulation and signal processing. He is Co-Director of Exeter’s Centre for Doctoral Training in Metamaterials (see http://emps.exeter.ac.uk/metamaterials/) and the Centre for Metamaterials Research & Innovation (https://emps.exeter.ac.uk/metamaterial-cmri). He also leads the Engineering Materials and Manufacturing Research Theme and is Head of the Nano Engineering Science and Technology Group in Exeter's Department of Engineering.

Professor Wright has collaborated at some time or other with most of the major electronics companies in the world, including IBM, Micron Semiconductor, ST Microelectronics, Philips, GEC-Plessey, Sony and Panasonic. He also works closely with smaller companies, such as PragmatIC, Waveoptics and Bodle Technologies Ltd, and has extensive links within the national and international defence and security sectors.

Prof Wright is a Fellow of the IET, has published over 350 journal and conference papers, holds multiple patents and has supervised to successful completion over 50 PhD students..