Konstantin Novoselov

Professor Sir Konstantin Novoselov is one of the most decorated and consequential physicists of the past three decades. Born in Russia in 1974, educated at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and Radboud University of Nijmegen, he is best known for a discovery made with adhesive tape. In 2004, working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Manchester alongside Professor Sir Andre Geim, he used sticky tape to peel single-atom-thick layers from a block of graphite. The result was graphene, the first two-dimensional material ever isolated: one atom thick, stronger than steel, lighter than paper, an excellent conductor of heat and electricity, and nearly transparent. Six years later, the discovery earned them both the Nobel Prize in Physics.

As a science speaker, Novoselov holds the Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Professorship at the National University of Singapore, where he also serves as Director of the Institute for Functional Intelligent Materials (IFIM), a research center he co-founded in 2021 with Professor Antonio Castro Neto. He simultaneously holds a part-time appointment as Langworthy Professor of Physics and Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Manchester, making him one of the rare scientists who bridges two of the world’s leading materials science institutions across continents. He was the youngest person to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in nearly 50 years when he received it at age 36. Every year since 2014, he has been listed among the most highly cited researchers in the world.

Beyond graphene, Novoselov’s research has expanded into the full family of two-dimensional materials and the van der Waals heterostructures that emerge when different 2D crystal layers are stacked with atomic precision. These “materials on demand” allow scientists and engineers to design structures with specific electrical, optical, mechanical, and thermal properties from the atomic level up, opening possibilities in electronics, photonics, energy storage, and biomedicine that were not conceivable with conventional three-dimensional materials. His most recent research direction applies artificial intelligence and machine learning to accelerate materials design, addressing the problem that the design space for 2D heterostructures is so large that human intuition alone is insufficient to navigate it.

Graphene’s Real-World Impact and the Next Frontier

Novoselov is clear-eyed about where graphene stands commercially today. It has found real applications in battery technology inside Chinese smartphones, in composite materials, and in an expanding range of industrial uses, and new applications continue to emerge as production scales. He has consistently argued that the most important legacy of graphene’s discovery is not any single application but the opening of an entire new field: the science and engineering of 2D materials now encompasses hundreds of materials with widely varying properties, and the ability to stack them into designer heterostructures is generating a new generation of electronic and photonic devices. He has also spoken publicly about the role of artificial intelligence in accelerating this research, and about what the next generation of “functional intelligent materials” — those with characteristics of biological systems, including self-healing, memory, and adaptive response — might look like.

As a speaker, Sir Konstantin Novoselov brings to the stage the intellectual authority of a Nobel laureate combined with a genuine gift for making the deepest concepts in condensed matter physics feel accessible, surprising, and directly relevant to the technology questions that matter most to business, policy, and investment audiences. Contact Aurum Speakers Bureau to book Sir Konstantin Novoselov for your next event.