National Graphene Institute appoints new research director

Vladimir Falko has been appointed research director at Manchester University’s National Graphene Institute, with a broad remit to make good on the commercial promise of graphene. Falko will oversee more than 230 researchers in graphene and 2D materials, led by Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov, joint holders of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics for discovering the material and its unusual attributes.

“The role of the National Graphene Institute, as a research platform, will be to help my colleagues at Manchester, across the UK and from 150 partners of the European Graphene Flagship, to shorten the path from exciting ideas to their practical realisation and delivery of new technologies to the UK/EU high-technology industry sector,” Falco said.    

Falko began his career by studying for his PhD at Russia’s Institute for Solid State Physics, and gained postdoctoral experience at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart and Oxford University, followed by 20 years of service at the UK’s Lancaster University.

He leads a work package in the €1 billion EU graphene flagship and is also co-director of the Graphene NOWNANO Centre for Doctoral Training at Manchester University. A fellow of the Institute of Physics, he was previously awarded an ERC Advanced Investigator Grant.