Romanian Magdalena Titirici, a professor who works at Queen Mary University of London, is a Royal Society of Chemistry Corday-Morgan Prize winner for 2018.

Titirici was awarded for the production of low-cost biomass derived nanostructured carbons in water and their impact in renewable energy technologies. She will receive GBP 5,000 and a medal, and will complete a UK lecture tour.

Professor Titirici’s research group mimics the natural process of carbon formation in the lab, a process that takes millions of years in nature. The resulting carbon is then used to build sustainable energy technologies such as batteries and fuel cells. They use bio-waste as a starting material, making the process sustainable.

Born and raised in Romania's capital, Titirici studied Chemistry at the University of Bucharest. Afterwards, she moved to Germany to pursue a PhD in Molecularly Imprinted Polymers at the University of Mainz and Dortmund with Borje Sellergren, followed by a Postdoc at the Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces with Markus Antonietti. She then remained at the Max-Planck Institute for additional five years as a group leader to consolidate her research on hydrothermal carbons before moving to the UK in 2013 as a Reader in Materials Chemistry. She was promoted to Professor in 2014.

The Royal Society of Chemistry is the UK’s professional body for chemical scientists, a not-for-profit organization with 175 years of history.

The full list of the 2018 winners can be found here.

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