Patrick Unwin

University of Warwick, UK

Patrick Unwin is Professor and Head of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick, where he founded the Electrochemistry and Interfaces Group, the EPSRC Warwick Centre for Analytical Science and the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Molecular Analytical Science.  

After graduating from Liverpool (BSc, 1985), he obtained a DPhil at the University of Oxford (1989). He then won independent research fellowships, first as Junior Research Fellow in Physical Sciences at Balliol College, Oxford, and then as SERC/NATO Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, USA.

Pat joined the University of Warwick in the early 1990s and has worked on many topics concerning electrochemistry and interfacial science, including problems of commercial and societal significance. More than 75 PhD students have graduated under his supervision, along with 35 postdoctoral fellows. Many former members of his group have independent academic positions and set up their own groups in institutions around the world and others have leadership positions in industry internationally. Pat and his group are particularly well known for inventing nanoscale electrochemical imaging techniques that provide new models for processes at electrodes (batteries, electrocatalysts, etc.) and other interfaces (biological cells, crystals). These inventions have been commercialised and adopted by academics globally.

Pat is the author of more than 450 papers and book chapters and has won a number of awards, including the Marlow Medal, Corday-Morgan Medal, Barker Medal and Tilden Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and the Vetter Prize and Experimental Electrochemistry Prize from the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE).

In 2018, he was the Society of Electroanalytical Chemistry Reilley Awardee, and was selected for the 2019 American Chemical Society, Analytical Division Award in Electrochemistry - in both cases the first from the UK. He was an ERC Advanced Investigator and Royal Society - Wolfson Research Merit Award holder. He is a Fellow of the RSC and ISE. Pat is a member of the editorial committees of a number of international journals and has led the development and organisation of dozens of workshops and conferences.