School of Engineering
2-24 York Street,
Belfast,
BT15 1AP,
Professor Pagona Papakonstantinou
Overview
Pagona Papakonstantinou is Professor of Advanced Materials in the School of Engineering and specialises in R&D of novel materials and multifunctional architectures for their strategic implementation in energy storage/conversion, structural and health care sectors.
She has carried out research in a wide ranging area, however three main themes can be identified:
- Synthesis of novel materials and hierarchical architectures employing plasma enhanced CVD and solution based strategies;
- Investigation of synthesis parameters-structure-properties relationships so as to fine tune electrochemical-mechanical properties for use in structural supercapacitors, electrochemical water splitting, fuel cells, metal air batteries and biosensors
- Electronic structure characterization employing lab and synchrotron based x-ray spectroscopies.
Recent research supported by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR, FA9550-17- 1-0042) and the Department for Economy, Northern Ireland, which she leads, is focussed on the design and manufacturing of graphene based multifunctional hierarchical composite aerostructures.
Underpinning research into graphene and 2D materials led to a series of patents and a license to 2-DTech/Versarien Ltd.
Pagona is an Invited Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) through the ‘Leaders in the Field’ scheme for her contributions in the field of nanomaterials and nanoscience. She is a recipient of a Royal Academy of Engineering/Leverhulme Trust Senior Fellowship (2011) and of a Distinguished Research Fellowship from Ulster University (2003).
She has served/serves on various committees and panels such European Commission, EPSRC, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin Light Source, Royal Irish Academy on Chemical and Physical Sciences; Institute of Physics in Ireland; National Access Programme (NAP) of Tyndall National Institute and UK Diamond Light Source.
Pagona was appointed to a Lectureship at Ulster in 1998 and promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2004 and a Personal Chair in 2009. Prior to this she undertook a number of post-doctoral positions including: magneto-optical material research at Queen’s University Belfast; fs direct laser micro-deposition at the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser (IESL) in Crete and industrial research on Silicon on Insulator (SOI) technologies at Analogue Devices.
Prof Papakonstantinou Pagona has a BSc (Hons) degree in Physics from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece (1988) and a PhD in Physics from the Queen’s University of Belfast (1994).
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