Saiful Islam (born 14 August 1963) is a British

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe ...

and professor of Materials science at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in contin ...

. Previously he was professor of materials chemistry at the

University of Bath (Virgil, Georgics II) , mottoeng = Learn the culture proper to each after its kind , established = 1886 (Merchant Venturers Technical College) 1960 (Bristol College of Science and Technology) 1966 (Bath University of Technology) 1971 (univ ...

. Saiful is a

Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry Fellowship of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) is an award conferred by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in the United Kingdom. FRSC award Achieving Fellow status in the chemical profession denotes to the wider community a high level o ...

(FRSC) and a Fellow of the

Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) is a UK engineering institution whose activities encompass the whole materials cycle, from exploration and extraction, through characterisation, processing, forming, finishing and applicatio ...

(FIMMM).In 2020, he received the

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all ...

Award for Energy Chemistry for his major contributions to the fundamental atomistic understanding of new materials for lithium batteries and perovskite solar cells.

Early life and education

Saiful was born in 1963 in

Karachi Karachi (; ur, ; ; ) is the most populous city in Pakistan and 12th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 20 million. It is situated at the southern tip of the country along the Arabian Sea coast. It is the former ...

, Pakistan to ethnically Bengali parents. The family moved to

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

in 1964 and he grew up in

Crouch End Crouch End is an area of North London, approximately from the City of London in the western half of the borough of Haringey. It is within the Hornsey postal district (N8). It has been described by the BBC as one of "a new breed of urban villa ...

, north London. There he went to

Stationers' Company's School The Stationers' Company's School was a former boys' grammar school, then a comprehensive school in Hornsey, north London. History The school started as the Stationers' Company's Foundation School. The Master from 1858 to 1882 was Alexander Kenne ...

, a state comprehensive. He received both a BSc degree in chemistry and a PhD (1988) from

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = � ...

, where he studied under Professor

Richard Catlow Sir Charles Richard Arthur Catlow (born 24 April 1947) is a British chemist and professor at University College London and Cardiff University. Previously, he was Director of the Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory (1998–2007), and Wolfson Profe ...

. Subsequently, he held a postdoctoral fellowship at the

Eastman Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...

laboratories in

Rochester, New York Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located i ...

, working on oxide superconductors.

Career and Research

Saiful returned to the UK in 1990 to become a lecturer, then reader, at the

University of Surrey The University of Surrey is a public research university in Guildford, Surrey, England. The university received its royal charter in 1966, along with a number of other institutions following recommendations in the Robbins Report. The institu ...

. In January 2006 he was appointed professor of Materials Chemistry at the University of Bath. His research interests lie in the field of clean energy materials, especially new materials for next generations of

lithium batteries Lithium battery may refer to: * Lithium metal battery, a non-rechargeable battery with lithium as an anode ** Rechargeable lithium metal battery, a rechargeable counterpart to the lithium metal battery * Lithium-ion battery, a rechargeable bat ...

, solid-state batteries and

perovskite Perovskite (pronunciation: ) is a calcium titanium oxide mineral composed of calcium titanate (chemical formula ). Its name is also applied to the class of compounds which have the same type of crystal structure In crystallography, crystal ...

solar cells. His group applies computational methods combined with structural techniques to study fundamental atomistic properties such as ion conduction, defect chemistry and surface structures. He has been a member of the editorial board of the ''

Journal of Materials Chemistry The ''Journal of Materials Chemistry'' was a weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering the applications, properties and synthesis of new materials. It was established in 1991 and published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. At the end of 201 ...

'', and sits on the advisory board of the RSC journal ''Energy and Environmental Science''. He is Principal Investigator of the Faraday Institution's 'CATMAT' project on Next-generation Lithium-Ion Cathode Materials. He presented the 2016

Royal Institution Christmas Lectures The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures are a series of lectures on a single topic each, which have been held at the Royal Institution in London each year since 1825, missing 1939–1942 because of the Second World War. The lectures present sci ...

, entitled "Supercharged: Fuelling the Future" on the theme of

energy In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of hea ...

, a commemorative lecture series for the BBC which celebrated 80 years since the Christmas Lectures were first broadcast on television in 1936. The lectures were broadcast on

BBC Four BBC Four is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002

, and achieved over 3.5 million interactions through the BBC broadcasts and social media. Saiful was interviewed before these lectures for articles in ''The Guardian''. A demonstration in these lectures led to a Guinness World Record for the highest voltage (1,275V) produced by a fruit battery using more than 1,000 lemons. Saiful has served on the Diversity Committee of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, r ...

, and was selected for the Royal Society's 'Inspiring Scientists' project that recorded the life stories of British scientists with minority ethnic heritage in partnership with National Life Stories at the British Library. His outreach activities include talks on energy materials to student audiences using 3D glasses organised by the TTP Education in Action at the UCL Institute of Education, London. He was interviewed for

The Life Scientific ''The Life Scientific'' is a BBC Radio 4 science programme, presented by Professor Jim Al-Khalili , in which each episode is dedicated to the biography and work of one living scientist. The programme consists of an interview between Al-Khalili a ...

programme on BBC Radio 4 in October 2019.

Personal life

Saiful lives in Bath with his wife, Dr Gita Sunthankar (a local GP), and their two children, Yasmin and Zak. In 2019, he declined a

New Year Honours The New Year Honours is a part of the British honours system, with New Year's Day, 1 January, being marked by naming new members of orders of chivalry and recipients of other official honours. A number of other Commonwealth realms also mark th ...

Award of an OBE. He is an

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

and Patron of

Humanists UK Humanists UK, known from 1967 until May 2017 as the British Humanist Association (BHA), is a charitable organisation which promotes secular humanism and aims to represent "people who seek to live good lives without religious or superstitious b ...

Awards and honours

Saiful is a

(FRSC) and a Fellow of the

(FIMMM). He has received several RSC research awards including the 2017 Peter Day Award for Materials Chemistry, 2013 Sustainable Energy Award, 2011 Materials Chemistry Division Lecturer Award and 2008 Francis Bacon Medal for Fuel Cell Science. He was a 2013 recipient of the

Wolfson Research Merit Award. From the

, he received the 2020 Award for Energy Chemistry.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Islam, Saiful Living people 1963 births British chemists Academics of the University of Bath Academics of the University of Oxford Academics of the University of Surrey Alumni of University College London British atheists People from Crouch End Fellows of the Royal Society of Chemistry British humanists Computational chemists 20th-century British chemists 21st-century British chemists British people of Bangladeshi descent Solid state chemists Fellows of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining