Robert Mokaya

Robert Minge Mokaya FRS is a Kenyan-British chemist who is Professor of Materials Chemistry and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement at the University of Nottingham. In 2024 it was confirmed that Mokaya would join the University of Sheffield in the role of Provost and Deputy-Vice-Chancellor (taking up the post in June 2024). Mokaya holds a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award.

Early life and education
Mokaya was born in Kenya. He attended the University of Nairobi, where he specialised in chemistry. After graduating he joined Unilever in Kenya. He moved to the University of Cambridge for his graduate studies, where he worked in the laboratory of William "Bill" Jones. After graduating, Mokaya was awarded a junior research fellowship, and started his independent career at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Research and career
In 1996 Mokaya was named an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Advanced Fellow, and by 2000 he had been made a lecturer at the University of Nottingham. In 2008 he was appointed Professor of Materials Chemistry. In 2017 Mokaya was awarded a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.

He investigates novel materials for carbon sequestration, focusing primarily on hydrogen fuel cells. Mokaya considers porous materials and their structure-property relationships. Nanostructured porous materials contain significant internal volume, which can be used for enhanced gas storage. Amongst these, Mokaya has studied mesoporous molecular sieves, porous carbons and zeolite templated carbons. He forms the nanoporous carbons by filling organic materials into porous inorganic structures, then heating them to the temperature at which they turn into pure carbon.

Mokaya was appointed Pro Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement at the University of Nottingham in 2019. He was part of a Royal Society programme to strengthen the capacity of African researchers to design, synthesise and optimise porous materials.

He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to the chemical sciences. In 2023, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).

Mokaya is the only black chemistry professor in the United Kingdom and stated that UK Research and Innovation has rejected all of his funding applications.