Looking Into the Future of Research - A Leaders' Panel

This event is aimed at highlighting the key questions in the field of expertise of each of our speakers to be answered by further research.

The format of the evening will be a 10min introductory talk by each of the following speakers followed by a panel discussion on their perspective about the field and how they see it develop in the coming years.

Register here to attend: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/looking-into-the-future-of-research-a-leaders-panel-tickets-45893324168

The panelists:

Professor Sir Richard Friend

Richard Friend holds the Cavendish Professorship of Physics at the University of Cambridge. He is Director of the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability and of the Maxwell Centre. His research encompasses the physics, materials science and engineering of semiconductor devices made with carbon-based semiconductors, particularly polymers. His research group was first to demonstrate using polymers efficient operation of field-effect transistors and light-emitting diodes. These advances revealed that the semiconductor properties of this broad class of materials are unexpectedly clean, so that semiconductor devices can both reveal their novel semiconductor physics, including their operation in efficient photovoltaic diodes, optically-pumped lasing, directly-printed polymer transistor circuits and light-emitting transistors.

Professor Andrea Ferrari

Andrea C. Ferrari earned a PhD in electrical engineering from Cambridge University, after a Laurea in Nuclear Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Italy. He is Professor of Nanotechnology and head of the Nanomaterials and Spectroscopy group at the Department of Engineering and Nanoscience Centre of Cambridge University. He is the founding Director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre. He is Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, Fellow of the American Physical Society, and Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award Holder. He is also the Chairman of the Executive Board of the EU Graphene Flagship.Professor Ferrari research interests include nanomaterials growth, modelling, characterization, and devices. In particular, he focuses on graphene, nanotubes, diamond-like carbon, and nanowires for applications in electronics and photonics.

Professor Jeremy Baumberg

Jeremy Baumberg is a leader in nanoscience and nanotechnology, working for much of his career at the interface between academia and industry. He has led interdisciplinary nano-centres at the Universities of Cambridge and Southampton, and developed novel devices within Hitachi, IBM, his spin-offs Mesophotonics and Base4. He is widely recognised as a leading innovator in Nano, with most recent awards being the Institute of Physics Young Medal (2013), Royal Society Fellowship (2011) and Royal Society Mullard Prize (2005). His research interest include constructing nano-materials with unusual interactions with light, especially ones that can be fabricated on a large scale which can lead to practical use. He has developed a range of unusual nanophotonics including kilometre-scale polymer opals, and is exploring what happens when we confine light to 1nm volumes or below, for probing single molecules and reactions. He has also explored how coherent and quantum properties can be manipulated by nano-structuring semiconductors, producing unusual condensates which can work at room temperature.

Professor Oren Scherman

Oren Scherman is the Professor of Supramolecular and Polymer Chemistry and Director of the Melville Laboratory. He is also a Lecturer in Chemistry and Next Generation Fellow at Jesus College. His research interests include: synthetic organic and polymer chemistry, functional nanosystems, stimuli-responsive materials and hierarchical self-assembly. Research within the Scherman group exploits host-guest chemistry to design and create dynamic materials. They use macrocycles to control molecular level interactions at colloidal, polymeric and small molecule interfaces. Their expertise spans from organic synthesis to material design with applications in sensing and the formation of novel composite materials.