Sir Andre Geim is the Regius and Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Manchester. He was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work on graphene, a one-atom-thick material made of carbon. He has also received numerous international awards and distinctions, including medals from the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences, and holds honorary doctorates and professorships from many countries and universities.

Andre Geim was born in Russia to German parents and holds dual Dutch and British citizenship. He started his academic career in Moscow, spent several years as a postdoctoral researcher at the universities of Nottingham, Bath and Copenhagen and then moved to the Netherlands as a tenured professor, before coming to Manchester in 2001.

Thomson-Reuters repeatedly named him among the world’s most active scientists and attributed to him three new research fronts – diamagnetic levitation, gecko tape and graphene. More than thirty of his papers have been cited >1,000 times with six of them >10,000 times which placed two of the latter among 100 most cited research papers in human history. He was also awarded the 2000 Ig Nobel prize for his work on levitation, becoming the first and only recipient of both Nobel and Ig Nobel Prizes. He has also received both Dutch and British knighthoods.