Congratulations to Professor Mary Ryan and Professor James Durrant.
Mary Ryan, who receives a CBE for services to Education and to Materials Science and Engineering, is a LCN Professor of Materials Science and Nanotechnology at Imperial, where she holds the Armourers and Brasiers’ Chair in Materials Science.
Her research spans diverse areas including energy materials (batteries, magnetocaloric cooling devices, photovoltaics, fuel cells and catalysis), nanomaterials for biosensors and therapies, the mechanisms associated with nanostructures that lead to human and environmental toxicity, and the potential of nanomaterials to remedy environmental damage – in particular for nuclear waste. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2015 and is also a Fellow of IoM3 and of the Institute of Corrosion.
James Durrant, Professor of Photochemistry in the Department of Chemistry, is awarded a CBE for services to photochemistry and solar energy research.
Professor Durrant’s work focuses on a key scientific challenge for the 21st century: the development of renewable, low-cost energy technologies. His group tackles this through the development of new chemical approaches to solar energy conversion – harnessing the Sun’s energy either to produce electricity (photovoltaics, like solar panels) or molecular fuels (such as hydrogen), as well as the related challenge of electrocatalytic fuel synthesis