Susan Perkin Honoured in Annual Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists

18 January 2023

Fellow and Tutor in Chemistry Susan Perkin has been named Award Laureate in the 2023 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the UK. The award comes in recognition of her experimental work using a custom-built instrument – known as the Surface Force Balance – to determine the properties of fluids.

Professor Perkin’s research focuses on the diverse properties that fluids can exhibit, depending on their chemical composition. Seawater, biological cytosol (the fluid inside cells), and batteries are all examples of solutions with different properties according to their relative concentration and chemical makeup of charged particles (electrolytes). While the behavior of dilute solutions is well-defined and predictable, Professor Perkin’s research focuses on ways to study highly concentrated electrolyte solutions that tend to be of particular interest to current science and technology, such as those used in batteries. These are generally more difficult to study.

Professor Perkin has developed a custom instrument called a Surface Force Balance (SFB) that can be used to study the mechanical, optical, electrostatic and dynamic properties of fluids, by shedding light on the complex interactions of concentrated solutions of charged particles at the molecular level. This has allowed her to uncover new information about biomolecular interactions and about energy storage in devices such as batteries and supercapacitors, where ionic interactions near liquid-solid interfaces are crucially important.

Professor Perkin says: ‘I’m delighted to hear the news of this award, which recognises the work of my whole team. It is an honour to work together with so many dedicated and creative scientists who share a passion to understand the microscopic world.’

The Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists, supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and administered by the New York Academy of Sciences, celebrate the past accomplishments and future potential of the UK’s most innovative young scientists and engineers. The 2023 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the UK received 77 nominations from 43 academic and research institutions across the UK.

The 2023 Blavatnik Awards in the UK Laureates and Finalists will be honoured at an award ceremony on 28 February 2023.