Professor Serena Cussen FRSC FIMMM

Serena Cussen (née Corr) studied chemistry at Trinity College Dublin, completing her doctoral work with Professor Yurii Gun'ko where she developed new magnetic nanocomposite materials for applications in magnetic resonance imaging. She then joined the University of California, Santa Barbara working with Professor Ram Seshadri as a postdoctoral researcher examining metal-insulator transitions in metal oxides. After a lectureship at the University of Kent, she moved to the University of Glasgow in 2013 where she became their first woman professor of Chemistry in 2018 followed by the first woman Head of Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Sheffield. She joined the School of Chemistry at University College Dublin as SALI Professor in Materials Chemistry in 2024.

Recipient of RSC Journal of Materials Chemistry Lectureship (2017), the ISIS Science Impact Award (2021) and the RSC Interdisciplinary Prize (2023), her research breaks new ground in the design and application of energy materials. She led the establishment of the UK Faraday Institution's consortium for cathode materials FutureCat, discovering and scaling up next-generation cathodes for Li-ion batteries and has engaged extensively with professional bodies and policy makers, including giving evidence to the UK House of Lords on the role of batteries in achieving net zero.

Serena is deeply committed to career sustainability and early career mentoring. Having held positions with the UK's Faraday Institution Expert Panel and Diversity Panel, EPSRC Materials Working Group, RSC's Materials Division Council and RSC’s Equity in Publishing group, she contributed to the RSC “Is publishing in chemistry gender biased?” report and was featured in the International Women’s Day report “The Chemical Ladies”. She is active in the promotion of women in STEM, delivering International Women’s Day keynotes and career features for women scientists and engineers.

She is a regular contributor to public outreach events, with her Royal Institution lectures garnering >160K views on YouTube. She is the Scientific Editor of Journal of Materials Chemistry A and sits on the advisory boards of Nanoscale, Chemistry of Materials, ACS Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research and Batteries & Supercaps. She is married to Eddie and they are parents to two boys.