Professor Mark Baker with his medal
Mark Baker, Professor of Surface Science and Engineering at University of Surrey, has been awarded the 2026 Harry Leck Memorial Medal by Vacuum Symposium UK. The medal is awarded, in the words of its official website, for “distinguished contributions to British scientific research and/or related scientific/technical communities, in the field of Vacuum Science and Technology”.
Mark was presented with the medal in July at Vacuum Symposium 2026, where Torr Scientific were represented by our General Manager, Pat Brown.
Mark’s career achievements are many, including inventing and developing a breakthrough (quite literally) technique that uses a pulsed femtosecond laser to ablate sample material to allow depth profiling by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The invention addresses the tendency of existing ion-sputtering ablation methods to skew the analytical results. The laser is also orders of magnitude faster than sputtering, avoiding the need to run automated analyses overnight. The invention is being commercialized by Thermo Fisher as part of their Hypulse XPS system.
Torr Scientific have had close links to Surrey for over 15 years, more often than not through Mark and his department.
Congratulations to Mark for this award from all of us at Torr Scientific!
Meanwhile, just down the corridor from Mark’s office at Surrey, James Whiting has been made School of Engineering Technical Manager. We previously knew James as manager of the microstructural studies unit (MSSU), a role that he will retain while gaining much wider responsibilities across the wider school. James is also active on LinkedIn where he sometimes shares impressive micrographs that he has acquired from all sorts of interesting samples.
Congratulations James and good luck in the new role!
