- Professor Andy Cooper, Royce Core Area Champion for Chemical Materials Design awarded prestigious Hughes Medal
- Award is given for the design and synthesis of new classes of organic materials with applications in energy storage, energy production and energy-efficient separations.
Professor Andy Cooper, Director of the Materials Innovation Factory and Core Area Champion for the Royce Chemical Materials Design theme has been awarded the prestigious Hughes Medal by the Royce Society. The accolade honours Prof Cooper’s research into the design and synthesis of new classes of organic materials with applications in energy storage, energy production and energy-efficient separations.
Professor Cooper’s research interests include organic materials, supramolecular chemistry, energy materials, and high-throughput methods. His research seeks to address the challenge of clean energy provision by developing new materials to harness energy from sunlight, and building methods to find such materials on a faster timescale.
His current focus is developing autonomous robotics to significantly accelerate the discovery of new materials and his team have developed a mobile robotic chemist that can work unassisted in the laboratory.
The Award
The Hughes Medal is awarded to an outstanding researcher in the field of energy. The award was named after the scientist David E. Hughes FRS (PDF) and was first awarded in 1902. Hughes was a Welsh-American scientist and musician who invented the first working radio communication system and the first microphone.
On winning the award, Prof Copper said:
“It is a terrific honour to receive this prize, which was first awarded 117 years ago. It reflects the work of a team of exceptionally talented researchers, both in my group in Liverpool and in the groups that we collaborate with elsewhere.”
Professor Cooper is the Academic Director of the Materials Innovation Factory, an £81 million facility at the forefront of advanced materials research, design and development.
He is also the Core Area Champion for the Henry Royce Institute’s Chemical Materials Design theme which aims to lead the discovery and analysis of new materials by collaborating with industry and combining high-performance computing and materials science.
