The Director
Professor Suprakas Sinha Ray
Director and Chief Researcher, Polymer Nanocomposites
For a detailed CV please click here
Professor Suprakas Sinha Ray is Chief Researcher and Director of the DST/CSIR National Centre for Nano-Structured Materials, Pretoria, South Africa. He received his PhD degree in Physical Chemistry at the University of Calcutta, India in 2001 and was a recipient of the ‘‘Sir P. C Ray Research Award’’ for the best PhD work. After three years of postdoctoral research at the Toyota Technological Institute in Japan, he spent two and half years as postdoctoral scientist at the Chemical Engineering Department, Laval University, Canada. Towards the end of 2006, he joined the CSIR Materials Science and Manufacturing group as Nano- Science Group Leader, in South Africa. In November 2007, he was promoted to Chief Researcher (level 2, highest position within CSIR S&T base) and Director of the National Centre for Nanostructured Materials, CSIR, South Africa.
Sinha Ray’s current research focuses on polymer-based advanced nano-structured materials (particularly layered silicate based polymer nanocomposites) and their applications. His honours and awards include the 2013 Morand Lambla Awardee, International Polymer Processing Society; Distinguish Professor, King Abdulaziz University, Kingdom of Saudi Arab (2012); Extraordinary Professor, University of Pretoria, South Africa (2012); Full Professor, University of Johannesburg, South Africa (2011); Global Star Award 2011 from the Engineering ceramic division, the American Ceramic Society; CSIR MSM Prestigious Established Researcher Award (2010); Adjacent Professor, Free State University, South Africa (2009); Prestigious CSIR President’s Award (2008); CSIR MSM Director’s award (2008); South Africa National Research Foundation rated Most Promising Researcher under the age of 35 (2008); JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Japanese Government (2002). Currently, he is serving as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Advanced Science Letters, International Journal of Plastic Films and Sheeting, Applied Nanoscience, and Journal of Nanomaterials.
He is one of the most active and highly cited authors (his articles have been cited more than 10600 times, google scholar, h factor 45, Google/Scopus), in the field of polymer nanocomposite materials and his work has been featured on various international journal cover pages on 14 different occasions. Recently, he has been rated as a Top 1% of most impactful and influential scientists (Chemistry, Materials Science and 22 Science disciplines) by Thomson Reuters Essential Science Indicators. In 2011, he was also rated as a Top 50 high impact chemist in the world (Feb. 2011, Thomson Reuter, probably youngest researcher in this list). To date he has given more than 25 plenary/keynote/invited presentations at various international conferences and organized/co-organized a number of international conferenceS. S. Ray is the author of 2 books, co-author of 3 edited books, 10 book chapters on various aspects of polymer-based nano-structured materials and their applications, and author and co-author of 187 articles (including 17 review articles) in high-impact international journals, 14 articles in peer-review international conference proceedings; 30 articles in national and international conference proceedings, as well as being the holder of several patents.