Philipp Kukura

Philipp Kukura FRSC (born 26 March 1978) is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He is best known for pioneering contributions to femtosecond stimulated Raman spectroscopy (FSRS), interferometric scattering microscopy (iSCAT) and the development of mass photometry.

Education and early life
He was born in Bratislava, then Czechoslovakia in a family of Slovak actor Juraj Kukura. In 1984 the family emigrated to Germany. In 2002 he graduated with a Master of Chemistry from the University of Oxford and competed in the 2001 and 2002 Rugby League Varsity matches. In 2006 he completed his PhD in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley College of Chemistry.

Career and research
After completing his PhD, Philipp Kukura moved to Zürich. There he worked at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral research assistant under the supervision of Professor Vahid Sandoghdar on nano-optics until 2010. He returned to Oxford in 2010 to work initially as an EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellow. In 2011 he was elected to a tutorial fellowship at Exeter College. In 2016 he was promoted to Full Professor of Chemistry.

In 2018 Philipp Kukura founded Refeyn Ltd. together with Justin Benesch, Daniel Cole, and Gavin Young to commercialise mass photometry.

Honours and awards

 * 2011 Royal Society of Chemistry Harrison-Meldola Award
 * 2015 Royal Society of Chemistry Marlow Award
 * 2017 EBSA Young Investigator Award and Medal
 * 2018 Klung Wilhelmy Science Award (Chemistry)
 * 2019 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists UK (Chemistry) Laureate
 * 2021 RMS Medal for Light Microscopy
 * 2022 Emil Thomas Kaiser Award
 * 2022 Sosei Heptares Prize For Biophysics of the British Biophysical Society