Saiful Islam
Profile
Saiful Islam is Statutory Chair/Professor in Materials Modelling in the Department of Materials at Oxford. He grew up in Crouch End, north London and obtained his Chemistry degree and PhD (1988) from University College London (with Richard Catlow FRS). This was followed by a Research Fellowship at the Eastman Kodak Labs, New York, USA, and faculty positions at the University of Surrey and the University of Bath.
Saiful is also Professorial Fellow at St Anne's College Oxford. He recently served on the RSC Board of Trustees and is a Patron of Humanists UK.
Research
Saiful's research interests encompass major contributions to the deeper understanding of atomistic processes in energy materials, especially those related to lithium batteries, solid-state batteries and perovskite solar cells.
Recent research has focused on:
(a) Lithium-rich cathode materials for Li-ion batteries (he leads the Faraday Institution CATMAT project on next-generation cathode materials);
(b) Solid electrolyte materials for lithium and sodium solid-state batteries;
(c) Metal halide perovskite materials for solar cells.
Awards/Honours
Recent awards include:
2024 Faraday Institution STEM Outreach Award
2023 Institute of Materials (IOM3) Robert Perrin Award
2022 Royal Society Hughes Medal
2022 Honorary Fellow, British Science Association
2020 American Chemical Society (ACS) Storch Award in Energy Chemistry
2017 Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Peter Day Award for Materials Chemistry
2016 Royal Institution Christmas Lecturer (for 80th TV anniversary)
**In 2019, he declined the award of an OBE and briefly outlines why here.
Outreach/Media
Saiful presented the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 2016 for BBC TV on the theme of energy and has a Guinness World Record for the highest voltage lemon battery.
He was interviewed in 2019 by Jim Al-Khalili for 'The Life Scientific' on BBC Radio 4 and presented an invited talk at the Brian Cox & Robin Ince Compendium of Reason 2022 charity event to 5,000 people at the Royal Albert Hall.
Here is a short Q&A for the Humanists-UK newsletter.
Invited Lectures Coming Up
-European Materials Research Society (E-MRS), 26-30 May 2025, Strasbourg France [Link] [Link] (two symposia)
-Royal Institution - Discover200, 21 June 2025, London [Link]
-8th International Conf on Perovskite Solar Cells & Optoelectronics: PSCO-25, Sept 2025, Perugia, Italy [Link]
-International Battery Materials Association (IBA), Nov 2025, Singapore [Link]
Other Key Links
Link to research group Link to publications Twitter @SaifulChemistry Link to LinkedIn
