Title: Materials for the future
Speaker: Prof. Sir K. S. Novoselov (Nobel Laureate)
Institute for Functional Intelligent Materials, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Time: 14:00-15:30, (Mon.) 19th Jan., 2026
Venue: Lecture Hall, North campus, IMR CAS
Welcome to attend!
Abstract:
Today’s materials are predominantly defined by their properties which are independent of time and environment. In many cases, such stability is useful, as it makes the behaviour of devices based on such materials robust and predictable. But what if we had a free hand to design any materials we want, with any properties we want – what kind of materials from our dreams we would design?
One of the dreams are materials which have some characteristics of biological systems: those with self-healing capabilities, with memory functions, those which can evolve differently depending on external conditions. I will be discussing the methodologies to design such artificial living systems and the areas of their applications.

Short biography:
Prof Sir Konstantin ‘Kostya’ Novoselov FRS was born in Russia in August 1974. He is best known for isolating graphene at The University of Manchester in 2004, and is an expert in condensed matter physics, mesoscopic physics and nanotechnology. Every year since 2014 Kostya Novoselov is included in the list of the most highly cited researchers in the world. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010 for his achievements with graphene. Kostya is a director of the Institute of Functional Intelligent Materials and holds a position of a Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Professor at the National University of Singapore. He is also part time Langworthy Professor of Physics and the Royal Society Research Professor at The University of Manchester. He is a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and undertook his PhD studies at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands before moving to The University of Manchester in 2001. Later Professor Novoselov joint the National University of Singapore in 2019. Professor Novoselov has published more than 400 peer-reviewed research papers. He was awarded with numerous prizes, including Nicholas Kurti Prize (2007), International Union of Pure and Applied Science Prize (2008), MIT Technology Review young innovator (2008), Europhysics Prize (2008), Bragg Lecture Prize from the Union of Crystallography (2011), the Kohn Award Lecture (2012), Leverhulme Medal from the Royal Society (2013), Onsager medal (2014), Carbon medal (2016), Dalton medal (2016), Otto Warburg Prize (2019), John von Neumann Professor from the John von Neumann Computer Society (2022) among many others. He was knighted in the 2012 New Year Honours.