Nanotechnologist Ravi Silva receives prestigious honour

The Friendship Award was presented to Professor Ravi Silva for his “important” contribution to China’s modernisation efforts, as well as his “exchanges and cooperation with other countries”. 

Professor Silva is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Surrey, where he is Director of the Advanced Technology Institute, a multidisciplinary research facility that uses nano-scale design of materials for next-generation technologies. ATI’s research spans clean energy, semiconductors and flexible electronics including perovskite solar cells, carbon nanomaterials, batteries and zero-burden wearable technology devices for healthcare applications. Sri Lankan-born British engineer Professor Silva is also a Distinguished Professor at Zhengzhou University, where he has held a post since 2018. In 2023, he was elected a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. 

Professor Silva was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2021 New Year Honours, elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2008 and is the recipient of several international awards, including the UNESCO Albert Einstein Silver Medal, and medals from the Institute of Physics, the Institute of Engineering and Technology and The Royal Society.  

For almost a decade, Professor Silva has sat on the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Transforming Systems through Partnerships (TSP) programme that has conducted over 300 projects worldwide placing engineering at the heart of society. These projects have supported international initiatives targeting areas critical to a more sustainable future – such as net-zero, decarbonisation, feeding a growing population and healthy living for an ageing population.  

Professor Silva joins a community of recipients of the Friendship Award, which includes several Nobel laureates – physicist Tsung-Dao Lee, chemist Alan MacDiarmid, cell biologist Erwin Neher and economist James Heckman.