Dr Will Branford is a Senior Lecturer in the Experimental Solid State group of the Condensed Matter Physics section of the Physics department. He is part of the management group of the London Centre for Nanotechnology and active in the nanotechnology effort at Imperial. His main research focus is the interplay between structure, magnetic and electronic properties of materials. His background is in solid state chemistry where the structuring was at the atomic scale. He also makes uses of nanofabrication to form arrays where there is structuring at the nanoscale. Artificial Spin Ice is an example of a magnetic metamaterial whose properties derive from the properties of the nano-units in the array, rather than the material it is made from.