Our website has moved to www.single–photon.com. This page is now found here. Please update your bookmarks and links.

Dr Philip A. Hiskett was born in Southport, England. He graduated with a B.Sc.(Hons) in Physics from the University of Leeds, UK in 1994; an M.Sc. in Optoelectronic and Laser Devices from Heriot–Watt University, UK in 1996 and a Ph.D. in Physics from Heriot–Watt University in 2000. His Ph.D. supervisors were Professor Gerald S. Buller (at Heriot–Watt) and Professor Paul Townsend (then at BT). His thesis was entitled "An investigation into the photon–counting performance of InGaAs/InP separate absorption, grading and multiplication avalanche photodiodes at a wavelength of 1.55µm".

In 2000, Phil was awarded the MacFarlane Prize for Best Ph.D. Thesis in Heriot–Watt University for the year 2000.

From 2000 to 2002, Phil was a research associate in the Photon Counting Group at Heriot–Watt University during which time he worked on:

1. An investigation into of the photon–counting performance of novel semiconductor devices fabricated from AlGaAs/GaAs.
2. An investigation into the photon–counting performance of novel semiconductor devices fabricated from Si/SiGe.
3. The construction and testing of a long wavelength (1550nm) quantum key distribution receiver.
4. The construction and testing of multiple–wavelength time–of–flight sensor.

In 2002, he joined the quantum key distribution team at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), USA where he worked primarily on the design, construction and testing of two fibre–optic–based quantum key distribution systems. He also contributed to the software development of one of these systems. In 2007, he returned to the Photon Counting Group at Heriot–Watt University and is currently working on a quantum key distribution system operating at gigahertz clock rates at a wavelength of 850nm.

Phil's research interests include optoelectronic devices, detector design, free–space optics (design and construction), quantum key distribution, photon–counting and he has considerable experience in software development in C/C++ and LabView programming languages.

Phil’s outside interests include photography and travelling.