Industrial Chemistry and Aqua Technology

Biography

Prof. Porfyrakis is an Associate Professor of Materials, an EPSRC Fellow and the Head of the Laboratory for Carbon Nanomaterials at the Department of Materials, University of Oxford. He is also a visiting Professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He holds an Undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece (1995) and an MSc Degree from UMIST, Manchester, UK (1996). After completing his DPhil at Oxford University in 2000, Prof. Porfyrakis has established a world-leading laboratory for the production and purification of both nitrogen-containing and metal-containing endohedral fullerene molecules. Prof. Porfyrakis has attracted over £2.5 M in funding as a Principal Investigator in the fields of endohedral fullerenes and organic electronics. He has over 100 publications (h-index: 26, i10-index: 51) that have attracted over 2330 citations. He has presented over 40 invited lectures and seminars, including 3 keynote lectures. In 2005 he won the Alan Glanvill Award of IOM3. In 2016 Prof. Porfyrakis has been admitted as a Fellow at the Royal Society of Chemistry for his contributions to Chemical Sciences. Prof. Porfyrakis is the Academic founder and Director of Designer Carbon Materials Ltd (www.designercarbon.com), a spinout company of the University of Oxford, aiming to commercialise endohedral fullerenes and their derivatives. The company has been featured at several newspapers such as the Sunday Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/12034595/This-is-themost- expensive-material-in-the-world.html) and the Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/most-expensive-thing-in-the-worldendohedral- fullerene-science-oxford-a6763356.html) selling the “most expensive material in the world” for miniaturizing atomic clocks. That story has since been reproduced from dozens of media outlets around the world such as: (http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-create-world-s-most-expensive-materialvalued- at-145-million-per-gram) and (http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/12/oxfordcompany- now-selling-endohedral-fullerenes-priced-at-110-million-per-gram/).

Research Interest

Carbon Nanomaterials, Endohedral Fullerenes, Organic Electronics, Quantum Nannoelectronics