Matt Hodgson
Senior Lecturer

Profile

Biography

I am a Lecturer in the School of Physics, Engineering and Technology specialising in theoretical and computational physics. My research focuses on the fundamentals of quantum theory and its application to modelling the electron excitation properties of materials.

Career

• University of York, Senior Lecturer (2026-present); Lecturer (2024-2026); Associate Lecturer (2021-2024)
• Durham University, Postdoctoral Researcher (2019-2021)
• Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Postdoctoral Researcher (2016-2019)

School roles

• Undergraduate Admissions Tutor (2026-present)
• Member of the Standing Academic Misconduct Panel for the Faculty of Sciences (2023-2026)
• Careers and Employability Coordinator (2023-2026)
• Virtual Learning Environment Coordinator (2021-2026)

Teaching

Undergraduate

Semester 1

• Advanced Theoretical Techniques (Stage 3 module, PHY00074H)

Research

Overview

I am a lead author of the iDEA code, a Python library for exploring and understanding many-body quantum systems. I identify limitations in the most popular approaches to quantum mechanics, such as density functional theory and many-body perturbation theory, and propose strategies to improve their accuracy and predictive power. My ultimate goal is to bring the same level of success to the calculation of excited states as has been achieved for the ground state.

Publications

Selected publications

• "Addressing hypersensitivity in density functional theory for reliable machine learning" L. Arnstein, J. Wetherell, R. Lawrence, P. J. Hasnip, M. J. P. Hodgson, npj Comput Mater (2026).
• "Machine learning the derivative discontinuity of density-functional theory" J. Gedeon, J. Schmidt, M. J. P. Hodgson, J. Wetherell, C. L. Benavides-Riveros and M. A. L. Marques, 2022 Mach. Learn.: Sci. Technol. 3 015011 (2021) 
• "Exact expressions for the height of the interatomic step in the exchange-correlation potential from the derivative discontinuity of the energy" M. J. P. Hodgson, Physical Review A 104 032803 (2021) 
• "From Kohn-Sham to many-electron energies via step structures in the exchange-correlation potential" E. Kraisler, M. J. P. Hodgson and E. K. U. Gross, Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation 17 (3), 1390–1407 (2021) 
• "Exact exchange-correlation potentials for calculating the fundamental gap with a fixed number of electrons" M. J. P. Hodgson, J. Wetherell and E. Fromager, Physical Review A 103, 012806 (2021) 
• "Accurate real-time evolution of electron densities and ground-state properties from generalized Kohn-Sham theory" M. J. P. Hodgson and J. Wetherell, Physical Review A 101, 032502 (2020) 
• "How Interatomic Steps in the Exact Kohn-Sham Potential Relate to Derivative Discontinuities of the Energy" M. J. P. Hodgson, E. Kraisler, A. Schild, and E. K. U. Gross, The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 8 (24), 5974–5980 (2017) 
• "Origin of static and dynamic steps in exact Kohn-Sham potentials" M. J. P. Hodgson, J. D. Ramsden and R. W. Godby, Physical Review B 93, 155146 (2016) (Editors' Suggestion).

Full publications list

For a full list of my publications see my personal webpage. 

External activities

Memberships

• AdvanceHE Fellow (2026-present)
• Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Peer Review College (2024-present)
• Royal Society of Chemistry (2020-2022)
• Durham University, University College (2019-present)
• European Theoretical Spectroscopy Facility (ETSF) (2012-present)
• Institute of Physics, Member (2016-present); Associate Member (2008-2016)

N8 Centre of Excellence in Computationally Intensive Research

• Machine Learning Academic Theme Lead at the University of York (2025-present)