David J. C. MacKay continued his education at Trinity College, Cambridge, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences (Experimental and theoretical physics) in 1988. He went to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as a Fulbright Scholar, where his supervisor was John Hopfield. He was awarded a PhD in 1992. In January 1992 MacKay was appointed the Royal Society Smithson Research Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge, continuing his cross-disciplinary research in the Cavendish Laboratory, the Department of Physics of the University of Cambridge. In 1995 he was made a University Lecturer in the Cavendish Laboratory. He was promoted in 1999 to
National Laboratory of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics National Laboratory of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics National Laboratory of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (KL FAMO) is the national inter-university research center with the headquarters at Institute of Physics of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. Established in 2002, the Laboratory is focused on atomic, molecular, and optical physics (AMO). The activities of the ultra-cold matter group at KL FAMO are focused on Bose-Einstein condensation (the first BEC in Poland was created in 2007 in KL FAMO ), and on ultra-cold molecules' photoassociation spectroscopy. Two strontium optical lattice atomic clocks are operating at the KL FL FAMO. Together