Andre Geim Professor, University of Manchester

Professor Andre Geim is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Senior EPSRC Research Fellow. He was born in Russia, educated in Moscow with a PhD from the Institute of Solid State Physics, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Chernogolovka, Nottingham, Bath and, shortly, Copenhagen before becoming professor at the University of Nijmegen and, since 2001, at Manchester University. Currently, he is director of Manchester Centre for Mesoscience and Nanotechnology and chair of condensed matter physics.

Geim is known for originality and breadth of his research, which is underscored by many highlights including mesoscopic superconductivity, magnetic levitation, microfabricated adhesives and, most recently, the discovery of two-dimensional atomic crystals.

He published over 130 peer-refereed papers, including ten Nature and Science articles and more than twenty papers in Nature Materials, Phys. Rev. Letters and Nature Physics. According to Essential Science Indicators, his work initiated two new research fronts (graphene and van-der-Waals adhesion). Geim's educational experiments on magnetic levitation ("flying frog"), research on bio-mimetic adhesives ("gecko tape") and the discovery of graphene have received massive media coverage worldwide.

His research was chosen in 2006 among "Scientific American 50" and twice (in 1998 and 1999) by the American Institute of Physics among its 50 annual highlights. Geim is also a recipient of the 2007 Mott Prize and a number of smaller research awards.