Andrew Burnett

Dr. Andrew Burnett is an Associate Professor in the School of Chemistry at the University of Leeds, within the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences. His research focuses on terahertz spectroscopy and computational chemistry, with applications in explosives, pharmaceuticals, and biological molecules.

His educational background includes:

• PhD in Electrical Engineering, University of Leeds (2008)
• MChem in Chemistry with Pharmaceutical and Forensic Science, University of Bradford (2004)

Burnett's research is centered on the development and application of terahertz (THz) spectroscopic techniques, particularly THz-time domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS), for studying a variety of materials including explosives, drugs-of-abuse, pharmaceutical polymorphs, and proteins. He has also made significant contributions to the application of solid-state density functional theory for interpreting THz and infrared spectra of crystalline materials, co-authoring the analysis code PDielec. His recent work aims at developing non-linear THz spectroscopic methods to investigate vibrational coupling and energy transfer.

He has been awarded several prestigious fellowships, including:

• EPSRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (2011)
• EPSRC Early Career Fellowship (2016)
• University Academic Fellowship (2017)

Burnett has held positions at the University of Leeds since completing his PhD, initially as a postdoctoral fellow under the FP6 TERANOVA project and a Leverhulme Trust project, then moving to the Faculty of Biological Sciences in 2011, and joining the School of Chemistry in 2015 as a Teaching Fellow. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2022. In education, he teaches physical chemistry, computational chemistry, and spectroscopy. He actively supervises PhD students and welcomes research enquiries in his areas of expertise.