Nicole Grobert - Biography#

Nicole Grobert became a Professor of Nanomaterials at the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford in 2010. She is also a Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and Visiting Professor at the BioNano Electronics Research Centre at Toyo University, Japan. Her research focuses on the design and manufacturing of speciality nanomaterials. Several scientific breakthroughs in the controlled production of these materials led to further developments that have been achieved through multiple proof-of-concept projects.

She received her DPhil in Physical Chemistry in 2001 under the supervision of Sir Harry Kroto FRS NL for which she received the International Carbon Pergamon Prize awarded every three years to the best thesis in Carbon Science. At the Max-Planck-Institute in Stuttgart, Germany she led the Nanotube team and she was awarded the Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship (2002), Royal Society University Research Fellowship (2006), and with the award of the Royal Society Industry Fellowship (RSIF at Williams Advanced Engineering, WAE) in 2016 she was the first to have held all three Royal Society Research fellowships. The RSIF enables enhanced collaborations with industry partners to develop new nanomaterials for target applications in high-performance motors, nanocomposites, batteries, multifunctional lightweight structures.

Prof Grobert is also Involved in Science Policy and she serves on the a number of high-level advisory committees including the World Economic Forum Future Technology Pioneers Programme Committee, No 10 Round Table on Advanced Materials, Ministerial Nanotechnology Committee, DEFRA meetings on Nanotechnology, The Royal Society URF Panel, Rosalind Franklin Committee, and Robert Hooke Committee, the European Commission (FET Panel, Flagship evaluation Panel). She spoke twice at The House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee and she has been Vice-President of the British Carbon Group. Moreover, she is a member the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering working group on nanotechnology commissioned by the UK government in July 2003. In 2018, she has been appointed to serve on the High Level Group SAM of the European Commission.