Royal Society Professorship awarded to Sir Kostya Novoselov

31 Oct 2014

Royal Society Research Professorships have been awarded to two world-class scientists including Nobel-prize-winning physicist Professor Sir Kostya Novoselov FRS

The award provides long-term support enabling leading scientists to focus on their research; appointments are usually made for up to 10 years.

The latest recipients of the award are Professor Sir Kostya Novoselov FRS, The University of Manchester and Professor Michele Dougherty FRS, Imperial College London.

Professor Sir Kostya Novoselov is known for his work on graphene for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics with Andre Geim in 2010. Since the isolation of graphene there have been many other 2D crystals that have been discovered and studied, including hexagonal boron nitride, molybdenum disulphide, niobium diselenide, amongst others. Collectively, these materials cover a large range of properties: from most conductive to insulating, from transparent to opaque.

Professor Novoselov is working to search for new 2D atomic crystals and investigate their unique properties. He also combines these 2D crystals into 3D stacks to create heterostructures – the different combinations of 2D crystals provide a unique opportunity to design the heterostructures with specific, predefined properties. Professor Novoselov is also involved with the new £61m National Graphene Institute at the University which, once completed, will be a major centre for continuing graphene and 2D materials research.

Professor Novoselov said: “Because we can combine very different materials in a stack which is only a few atomic layers thick – we can encode very specific properties into these heterostructures, in fact a number of different properties, which can then be used for multifunctional applications. We are talking about designing materials on demand for specific applications.”

Professor Novoselov has also received Royal Society funding since 2007 under the University Research Fellowship scheme.

Professor Michele Dougherty FRS is the Principal Investigator for two major outer planetary space missions – the NASA Cassini spacecraft which is in orbit around Saturn and the ESA JUICE spacecraft that will go into orbit around Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon. For the past 15 years she has been responsible for the leadership of the Cassini magnetometer instrument team, which measures magnetic fields in space.

The Royal Society Research Professorship posts provide long-term support for internationally recognised scientists of outstanding achievement. Previous holders of Royal Society Research Professorships include six Nobel Laureates and five Presidents of the Royal Society.