Professor scoops two UNESCO awards

Professor Ravi Silva of the University of Surrey has been awarded the UNESCO 2003 Javed Husain Prize for Young Scientists and the UNESCO Albert Einstein Silver Medal.

Professor Ravi Silva of the University of Surrey has been awarded the UNESCO 2003 Javed Husain Prize for Young Scientists and the UNESCO Albert Einstein Silver Medal.

Silva is Professor of Solid State Electronics in the School of Electronics and Physical Sciences of the University.

He received the award today from the Director-General of UNESCO at a ceremony in Budapest, Hungary on World Science Day, 10th November 2003.

In addition to this prestigious international award, before he departed for Hungary, on 5th November in London, Prof Silva received the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) Achievement Medal for 2003.

The citation from the Director-General of UNESCO reads: "It is particularly gratifying for me to be able thus to express the Organisation's recognition of your outstanding contributions in the field of electronics development and advanced device application.

I congratulate you most warmly on this distinction".

Prof Silva received the IEE award for "his outstanding contributions to electronic materials and devices".

He was presented with his award at the Mountbatten Memorial Lecture in London.

Speaking of the awards, University of Surrey Vice-Chancellor Professor Patrick Dowling said: "I am extremely pleased to be able to congratulate Ravi on these new awards.

I offer him my personal best wishes on his brilliant achievement.

The entire community of the university is very proud of Ravi as a colleague and we all wish him continuing success.

Our star-studded School of Electronics and Physical Sciences is world class in both research and teaching and Ravi is a great example to his colleagues and students of the levels of international recognition that can be achieved at such a relatively young age".

A native of Sri Lanka, Prof Silva was nominated for the UNESCO award by his home government.

He is married to another electronic engineering graduate, Nayanee, and they have two sons aged three and five.

Nayanee has taken a different career path to her husband and is now a finance manager with a specialist HR consultancy.

Prof Silva is a keen sportsman who enjoys athletics and playing badminton and tennis and he still holds a public schools record for the 200m.

In September 2001 Silva was promoted by the University of Surrey to become possibly the youngest ever professor of electronic engineering.

His achievement at the age of just 31 is remarkable and he has a bright future ahead of him at the University, where he has helped to establish the Large Area Electronics and Nanotechnology research group, which specialises in the development of materials for device applications.

In November 2001 Prof Silva was honoured with the Charles Vernon Boys Medal and Prize, a prestigious experimentalist award, for his outstanding experimental contribution to carbon based electronics and the physics of growing carbon nanotubes.

This award was named after Sir Charles Vernon Boys, who was President of The Physical Society, the precursor to the Institute of Physics.

The award is one of 16 presented by the Institute of Physics to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the development, management, understanding and communication of physics worldwide.

The citation reads: "Professor Ravi Silva CEng CPhys FInstP MIEE, University of Surrey, for his outstanding contribution to experimental physics in the development of electronic materials for advanced device applications, particularly in carbon based electronics".

Most recently Prof Silva has made important contributions to the low temperature growth of carbon nanotubes, which makes it possible to grow these materials now on plastic and even paper.

This work is being pursued both academically and commercially in the form of a university spinout.

Other research being examined for commercial exploitation include electron emitters for flat panel display applications and nanomanipulation techniques for the fabrication of bespoke prototype electronic devices and circuits.

Prof Silva led the University of Surrey's Integrated Electronics research team which was awarded one of only eight Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Portfolio Partnership Awards in April 2003.

The team received funding in excess of GBP 6 million over 5 years to further their research in three specific fields.

The Portfolio Partnership is fostering the crossdisciplinary activities required to address the "grand challenges" of the future.

Much of the themed research undertaken by the group has relevant interfaces; in terms of, for example, plastic displays that allow for immersive environments, or high speed electronic information transfer with maximum information content for surgery in a portable manner.

Nanotechnology, system-on-chip and plastic electronics research under the leadership of Professor Ravi Silva and Professor Ian Robertson in the new Advanced Technology Institute, is truly multidisciplinary, bringing together electronics, physics, biology, computing and engineering.

One objective is to produce devices to functionalise carbon nanotubes.

Expertise unique to Surrey on low temperature growth will be used in conjunction with large area plastic substrates for applications such as wraparound displays, solar cells, large area sensors, and composites for the aerospace and automobile sectors.

The team are also exploring new device structures and novel architectures that will attempt to exploit one-dimensional conduction, and will examine devices to interface directly to biological systems.

The focus of the systems integration and circuit design activities is to push the upper frequency limit of radio frequency and optoelectronic transceiver modules.

Future wireless multimedia communication systems are expected to exploit the millimetre-wave spectrum.

The research is investigating use of the nanoelectronic devices for these and other applications such as medical imaging systems based on bioelectromagnetic interactions.

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