Mohammad Khaja Nazeeruddin

Mohammad Khaja Nazeeruddin (born 1957 in Thumboor, Andhra Pradesh, India) is an Indian-Swiss chemist and materials scientist who conducts research on Perovskite solar cells, dye-sensitized solar cells, and light-emitting diodes. He is a professor at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) and the director of the Laboratory for Molecular Engineering of Functional Materials at School of Basic Sciences.

Career
Nazeeruddin received a PhD in chemistry from the Osmania University in Hyderabad, Indiaserved as a lecturer at Osmania University for two years. He then joined the Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute in Bhavnagar, India. In 1987 he joined EPFL first as a postdoctoral fellow and then held several positions as research fellow for seven years. In 2012, he was promoted to "Maître d’ Enseignement et de Recherche" (senior lecturer). Since 2014 he has served as full professor at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) and head of the Laboratory for Molecular Engineering of Functional Materials at School of Basic Sciences based at EPFL's Valais campus.

He has also had several affiliated and voluntary positions while working and employed at EPFL, such as World Class University Professor (2009–2014) and as BKPLUS 21 (2014–2019) at the Department of Advanced Materials, Chemistry of the Korea University, and as Visiting Professor at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (2014–2021) and at the North China Electric Power University (2014–2021), and as an eminent professor at Brunei.

Research
Nazeeruddin's research focuses on chemical engineering of functional materials for photovoltaic and light-emitting applications such as Perovskite and dye-sensitized solar cells, and light-emitting diodes.

His team conducts research in the area of inorganic chemistry of ruthenium sensitizers that convert solar energy through the use of high surface area nanocrystalline mesoscopic films of oxide semiconductors. These tailored-sensitizers have attracted additional research in dye-sensitized solar cell research. They have synthesized several ruthenium sensitizers (N3, N719 and N749),  donor-π-bridge-acceptor porphyrin sensitizers, and near IR sensitizers. A further field of their research encompass organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) that are used in the fabrication of digital displays. They contributed novel blue, green, and red phosphorescent iridium emitters for OLEDs.

His laboratory is located at the EPFL-Sion Energy center, focusing on organic, inorganic lead halide perovskite solar cells and Light Emitting Diodes research. His laboratory has fabricated blue, green, and red PLEDs with unprecedentedly high external quantum efficiency. His group has investigated solutions (one-step and sequential deposition) and sublimation-deposited perovskite solar cells and obtained a power conversion efficiency of 25%. His group has developed a Perovskite Solar Cells Module (area 26.02 cm2) with an efficiency of 22.4%. Their research has been covered in several international news outlets. However, it is important to note that these cells and modules are not commercially deployed and much more research and development needs to be done and long-term stability of the cells and modules have yet to be demonstrated. There are numerous leading researchers world-wide working on this problem. It is important to note that perovskite-based solar cell technology in general is still in the developmental stage and essentially no perovskite-based solar modules have been commercially deployed for harnessing solar power.

Publications & Awards
Nazeeruddin is a co-author on numerous peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and is a co-inventor on many patents. According to Thomson Reuters he has been named a "Highly Cited Researcher" in chemistry, materials science and engineering in 2016 and 2017, and was included in the list of "World's Most Influential Scientific Minds" from all scientific domains. As stated in the ISI listing he is one of the most cited chemists with more than 126'000 citations and an h-index of 160. His group has earned worldwide recognition and leadership in Perovskite solar cells as evidenced by The Times of Higher Education named him "the top 10 researchers in the world working on the high impact perovskite materials and devices". Nazeeruddin was listed as one of the Top 2% Most-Cited Scientists in the world from the list published by Stanford University in October 2022. He is an elected member of the European Academy of Sciences, and is a fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry. Fellow of Telangana Academy of Sciences, and Member of the Swiss Chemical Society. He was awarded the 34th Khwarizmi International Award in Basic Sciences, 2021.

Since 2018 he has been a jury member of the Rei Jaume I foundation in Spain.

He is the recipient of the best paper award from the journal Inorganics, the EPFL Excellence Prize (1998 and 2006), the Brazilian FAPESP fellowship award (1999), the Japanese Government Science & Technology Agency Fellowship (1998), and Government of India National Scholar award (1987-1989).

He is Editor in Chief, Chemistry of Inorganic Materials, an Advisory Board member at Advanced Functional Materials, an Associated Editor at Energy Chem, an Editorial Advisory Board member at Scientific Reports, an Editorial Advisory Board at RRL Solar, and an Editorial Advisory Board member at Artificial Photosynthesis.