Valeria Nicolosi
First and last name: Valeria Nicolosi
Title: Prof.
Affiliation: Trinity College Dublin, School of Chemistry
Address: CRANN Naughton Institute Dublin Ireland
Website(s): https://chemistry.tcd.ie/cpam/
Short Biography:
Valeria Nicolosi holds the position of Professor of Nanomaterials and Advanced Microscopy at the School of Chemistry at Trinity College Dublin. She is a distinguished nanotechnologist whose expertise lies in the realm of low-dimensional nanostructures and high-end electron microscopy.
In 2001, she earned her BSc in Chemistry from the University of Catania, followed by a PhD in Physics from Trinity College Dublin in 2006. She moved to the University of Oxford in February 2008 as a Marie Curie Fellow. In April 2008 she was awarded with a Royal Academy of Engineering/EPSRC Fellowship. In 2012 she returned to TCD as Research Professor. In 2016 she was promoted to Chair of Nanomaterials and Advanced Microscopy. She is the first woman to have reached the position of Chair in the School of Chemistry since the foundation of TCD in 1592.
She is a Principal Investigator in the Science Foundation Ireland funded research centres AMBER (The National Centre for Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research) and IForm (The National Centre for additive manufacturing).
In 2019, Prof. Nicolosi is an eight times ERC awardee (StG in 2011, followed by 3 PoC grants to bring results of frontier research closer to the market, a CoG in 2016, followed by 3 further PoC grants in 2019, 2022 and 2025).
Prof. Nicolosi served as an Advisory Board member of the European Innovation Council (EIC) from 2019 to 2021 and she is currently an Ambassador for the EIC.
Prof. Nicolosi's research encompasses the synthesis, exfoliation, and characterization of two-dimensional materials, with a specific emphasis on applications in energy storage. She actively employs advanced electron microscopy techniques, including aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS), and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), to investigate material properties. Her prolific contributions to the field are reflected in the publication of more than 250 papers, which have garnered over 55,000 citations, and an H-index of 79. Notably, she has been repeatedly recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics, receiving this distinction every year since 2018. Aspects of her research have been licensed to companies like Thomas Swann, Samsung, Intel, Lego, Ferrari, etc.
As a recognition of her career achievements, in 2021 Prof. Nicolosi was conferred the honourary decoration of “Cavaliere” in the Order “Stella d’Italia” by the President of the Italian Republic, at the proposal of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In August 2024, the Irish Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science Patrick O’Donovan TD appointed Prof. Nicolosi to the Board of the newly announced Taighde Éireann – Research Ireland founding agency with a four-year term. This new agency merges Science Foundation Ireland and the Irish Research Council and has the remit to fund research and innovation excellence in all disciplines across the spectrum of Arts, Engineering, Humanities, Mathematics, Science, Social Sciences, Technology and others.
Abstract:
"2D nanomaterials inks for energy applications"
Liquid phase exfoliation has been proved to be a cheap, scalable method for the mass production of 2D sheets. This talk will first discuss the galaxy of existent layered materials, with emphasis on synthesis, liquid-phase exfoliation, and characterization, focussing on some key applications recently developed in our laboratories, ranging from energy storage to printed electronics.
We will for example discuss how two-dimensional nanomaterials can be formulated in aqueous and organic viscous inks for conventional slurry casting, as well as extrusion printing, inkjet printing, and aerosoljet 3D printing, and demonstrate direct printing on various substrates.
Figure 1: Printed devices based on MXenes inks