Rachel Angharad Oliver

Early life and education Oliver studied engineering and materials science at the University of Oxford and completed an industrial placement in metallurgy. Her final year masters project was in optoelectronic materials. where she began to work with gallium nitride under the supervision of Andrew Briggs. She studied the morphology of gallium nitride light-emitting diodes (LEDs), identifying what factors controlled their efficiency and the impact of defects.

She was appointed a lecturer at the University of Cambridge in 2011. Oliver studies gallium nitride materials for LEDs and laser diodes. Her research considers ways to engineer the nanostructure of light emitting diodes and how this impacts macroscopic device performance. She was the first to note rabi oscillations of GaN quantum dots. She designed a quasi-two-temperature growth method to pattern GaN quantum dots, which improved their emission by a factor of ten. She held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship from 2006 to 2011. and in 2023 was awarded the academy's Chair in Emerging Technologies.

She was awarded an OBE for her services to Materials Engineering in the 2025 King's New Years Honours List.

Personal life Oliver's husband is a cardiologist with whom she has a son.