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Department of Physics

The Cavendish Laboratory
 

Biography

Sam Stranks (@samstranks) is Professor of Optoelectronics and Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology and a Cavendish Joint Member in the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. He is also a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Institute of Physics.

Sam graduated from the University of Adelaide in 2007 with a BA (German and Applied Mathematics), BSc Hons (Physics and Physical Chemistry) and a University Medal. He completed his PhD as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, receiving the 2012 Institute of Physics Roy Thesis Prize. From 2012-2014, he was a Junior Research Fellow at Oxford University and Worcester College, Oxford, before holding a Marie Curie Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2014-2016). Sam established his research group (@Strankslab) in Cambridge in 2017.

Full publications list on Google Scholar here.

 

Research

Sam's research focuses on the optical and electronic properties of emerging semiconductors including halide perovskites, carbon allotropes and organic semiconductors for low-cost electronics applications such as photovoltaics and lighting. He received the 2016 IUPAP Young Scientist in Semiconductor Physics Prize, the 2017 Early Career Prize from the European Physical Society, the 2018 Henry Moseley Award and Medal from the Institute of Physics the 2019 Marlow Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry, the 2021 IEEE Stuart Wenham Award, the 2021 Leverhulme Prize in Physics, the 2021 EES Lectureship and the 2022 Lem Prize. He is a TED Fellow and in 2017 was listed by the MIT Technology Review as one of the 35 under 35 innovators in Europe. Sam is a co-founder of Swift Solar, a startup developing lightweight perovskite PV panels, and Sustain/Ed, a not-for-profit developing education for school-age children around climate change solutions. He is also an Associate Editor at the AAAS journal Science Advances, and sits on the Editorial Boards for the journals ACS Energy Letters and Advanced Energy Materials.

Publications

Key publications: 

Full publications list on Google Scholar here: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=DI-tPCEAAAAJ&hl=en.

Professor of Optoelectronics, Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology.
Cavendish Joint Member
Royal Society University Research Fellow
Fellow, Clare College
portrait of Sam Stranks

Contact Details

Email address: 
Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology,
Office 1.03, Philippa Fawcett Drive, Cambridge CB3 0AS, UK
Cambridge

Affiliations

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