Professor Max Lu joined the University of Surrey in April 2016 as President and Vice-Chancellor. Previously he was Provost and Senior Vice-President, following service as Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) for five years since 2009, at the University of Queensland, Australia.
Professor Lu lectured at Nanyang Technological University from 1991 to 1994, and then joined the University of Queensland in 1994. He was the foundation director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Functional Nanomaterials (2003-2009). He won the Australian Research Council (ARC) Federation Fellowship twice in 2003 and 2008.
Professor Lu’s area of research interest and expert lies at the interface of nanomaterials and chemical engineering. He has published over 500 referees journal papers (Scopus H-index=101 and over 38,000 citations) and given numerous plenary and keynote lectures at international conferences and symposia. He is co-inventor of more than 20 granted international patents for inorganic nanomaterials for energy, environmental and biological applications.
As a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher in both Materials Science and Chemistry, he has won numerous awards including Orica Award, RK Murphy Medal, Le Fevre Prize, ExxonMobil Award, China International Science and Technology Award, Japan Chemical Society Lecture Award and Chemeca Medal.
He is an elected Fellow of IChemE, Royal Society of Chemistry, Australian Academy of Science, and Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. Professor Lu had served on many government committees and advisory boards including those under the Australian Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council and ARC College of Experts.