Professor Pola Goldberg Oppenheimer BSC (Hons), BEng (Hons), MSc (Hons), PhD

2021-Current: Professor in Microengineering and Bionanotechnology, School of Chemical Engineering and Healthcare Technologies Institute, University of Birmingham, UK

2018-2021: Reader in Microengineering, School of Chemical Engineering, University of Birmingham, UK

2016-2021: Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow, UK

2013-2018 : Birmingham Fellow, School of Chemical Engineering, University of Birmingham, UK

2012-2013: Research Fellow at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Centre of Advanced Photonics and Electronics (CAPE), University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

2008-2012: PhD in Physics, University of Cambridge with Springer Award for Recognition of Scientific Excellence, Cavendish Laboratories, Churchill College, Cambridge, UK 

2006-2008: MPhil in Nanotechnology and Engineering, Ben-Gurion University (1st Class Honours)

2002-2006: BSc in Chemistry, Ben-Gurion University (1st Class Honours)

2002-2006: BSc in Chemical Engineering, Ben-Gurion University, Israel (1st Class Honours)

2016: Medici Enterprise Training Programme, Enterprise Acceleration and Translation, UK

2015: Masters in Learning and Teaching, Higher Education Academy

2013: Masters in Leadership and Management, Level 3, Institute of Leadership, Cambridge 

IPEM: Member of the Institute of Engineering and Physics in Medicine

SPIE:Member of the International Society for Optics and Photonics

MRSC: Chartered Chemist and Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry

FNS: Elected Fellow of the International NANOSMAT Society

HEA: Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK

FIAAM: Elected Fellow of the International Association of Advanced Materials

FiET: Elected Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology

HONORS, AWARDS AND EVIDENCE OF ESTEEM

2021: Royal Society of Chemistry Beilby Prize and Medal

2020: Case Study Commissioned by the Royal Academy of Engineering, London, UK

2020: News Releases:  ‘New Device for Detecting Traumatic Brain Injury 'On the Spot'

2020: TechWomen100 National Award for senior influential women across UK in Technology and Industry

2020: ISSF for EPSRC Case Study, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK

2019: Honoured in the ‘Birmingham Heroes’ in Healthcare Technologies Campaign, UK

2019: International Women in Engineering Day Honour - ‘Transforming the Future of Science and   Engineering’, UK

2018: All Party Parliamentary Engineering Group - House of Lords, London. Invited as envoy at the discussion, hosted by Professor the Lord Broers, regarding the Government’s Year of Engineering campaign to discuss ways of tackling the engineering skills gap and to help widen the pool of young people who join the profession. Stephen Metcalfe MP, Government Ambassador for the Year of Engineering, discussed why the sector is of such vital importance

2017: ‘Voice of the Future’, House of Commons Science & Technology Award, Parliament, London. Representing the Royal Academy of Engineering at session of the government Ministers of State for Research and Innovation, pitching questions to the Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, J. Johnson, MP

2016: BBC1 WM News Release: ‘A breakthrough blood test for serious brain injuries’ & BBC 95.6FM Radio Interview

2016: Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship for outstanding early-career researchers

2015: Leading Female Scientists in Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Birmingham, UK. News release on research work: ‘’Nanotechnology and Developing Novel Nano-Detection Devices’’

2014: National Public Engagement Award: ‘Soapbox Science’, L’OREAL-UNESCO, London. A hub of scientific discussion displaying science to the public, aimed to help eliminate gender inequality in science

2013: Prestigious Birmingham Fellowship, University of Birmingham, UK

2013: Award in Leadership and Management, University of Cambridge. Awarded by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge as a recognition of excellent leadership and management skills

2013: Springer Award for Excellence Switzerland. Recognising outstanding scientific excellence

2012: University of Cambridge Annual Reports Cover. The high-impact research was chosen, due to eye-catching images, to illustrate the cover titled ‘‘We All Fall Over Sometimes (pdf)’’ of the University of Cambridge Annual Reports

2011: Carl-Zeiss Imaging Award. Highlighted in the Der Spiegel and Mail Online for quirky images, which provide a visual insight into the ways in which science makes a vital contribution to our lives, interviewed on the Research News and media exposure on many websites as well as Cambridge News daily newspapers

2011: Kodak ltd. Young Materials Scientist Award, UK

2009: Cambridge Overseas Trust Scholarship, University of Cambridge, UK

Professor Oppenheimer leads an interdisciplinary research group at the University of Birmingham, closely working with the clinical teams at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEHB) and Birmingham Enterprise (UoBE), the University’s technology transfer specialists. Her group's research programme is targeted at exploring the frontiers of micro to nanomaterials engineering while bridging the gap between nano-to-macroscopic-level understanding and implementations of novel hybrid and nanocomposite materials and submicron structures for miniaturised functional devices for advanced healthcare applications. Professor Oppenheimer is developing cutting-edge Engineering solutions to tackle major medical problems.

Professor Oppenheimer's research interests lie in nano and submicron structure formation (please see the ANMSA group website: Advanced Nano-Materials, Structures and Applications) at surfaces and in thin films, including pioneering the potential use of hierarchical electrohydrodynamically generated functional structures to develop novel polymer-based nano-detection devices. She brings detailed expertise in creating and aligning a wide range of nanostructures in polymers, carbon nanotube-based nanocomposites, crystalline materials and a synergistic interest in biometrics, including the use of polymers with 10mm morphologies as templates to create inorganic functional devices.

In 2012, Professor Oppenheimer received her PhD from the University of Cambridge with accolades of scientific excellence. In 2013, she was appointed to a highly competitive Birmingham Fellow at UoB. The significance of her revolutionising scientific contributions and international standing has been recognised through numerous awards, markers of esteem, promotion to Professor in Microengineering and Bio-nanotechnology and the highly prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) Fellowship.

Realising that critical challenges of increasing complexity must be addressed in the field of Microengineering and that systems that can self-assemble, self-regulate and self-structure will have a major impact on future technologies, she has pioneered a highly-successful approach to unconventional nanostructuring and opened novel means to build-up applied materials. She has a broad international collaborative network and partnerships with industry including the BAE-Systems, P&G and Dstl, whilst leading highly-interdisciplinary research with distinctive discoveries, which have introduced innovative concepts in lithographically building-up applied chemical systems that have impacted the work of many research groups worldwide.

Her research is recognised as world-leading, reflected by her publications, all in top-quality prominent journals (e.g., Advanced Materials, Nature Biomedical Engineering) and her high-demand to lecture at the most prestigious conferences worldwide (48+ keynote/invited addresses). She has >70 independent publications and consistently publishes scientifically rigorous work in gold-standard journals. She authored a book, ten book chapters and filed four patents. The importance of her exciting scientific discoveries and transformative nature of her research have been recognised with over £18M funding portfolio and the highly-prestigious RAEng Fellowship, being featured in many press-releases, BBC news, radio interviews and selected for Case Studies, commissioned by the EPSRC and the RAEng.

She has been a recipient of several prestigious awards and markers of esteem at national and international level including the, RAEng Prize, WomenTech100 and Carl-Zeiss Awards. She was an envoy in the House of Commons Science&Technology Committee at the ‘Voice of the Future’ with Government Ministers of State for Science, Research and Innovation, featured in the ‘Birmingham Heroes in Healthcare Technologies’ Campaign and selected to the ‘Parliamentary Engineering Group’ at the House of Lords.

Professor Oppenheimer initiated new area of research in intelligent nanostructuring of materials for practical devices in Chemical Engineering by pioneering the Electrohydrodynamic Lithography (EHL). She discovered that by controllably inducing interfacial instabilities in homogeneous nano-films via electric field, yields tuneable nanostructures, down to the atomic level. While instabilities are undesirable in nature, in an unconventional manner, she has demonstrated that these can be harnessed to produce morphologies by precisely controlling the nano-capacitive interface, enabling tailoring the properties of many applied materials. She has subsequently established simultaneous patterning of multilayer material systems, yielding hierarchical nanoarchitectures with novel functionalities and designed new composite nanostructured materials, yielding exceptional synthetic adhesion to rough surfaces and superhydrophobicity. Her recent invention of smart nanoplasmonic-optofluidic device, paved the way to addressing the most urgent challenges associated with timely detection of traumatic brain injury (TBI). TBI, a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, is notoriously hard to diagnose at the point-of-care, resulting in poor-prognosis, impaired neurological function, and death. Building upon the fundamental chemical principles of controlling the electrostatic nanoforces, her distinctive research program led to significant socioeconomic impact, by developing optofluidic nanoengineered gold-architectured substrates for sensitive, label-free spectroscopic detection of trace- level concentrations of TBI-biomarkers from blood, enabling rapid diagnostics at point-of-care, saving many lives.

• 2020 - Current: Module Lead and Coordinator ‘Sensor Systems in Medicine’ LH/LM (MEng/MSc), UoB
• 2019 - Current: Postgraduate Programme Development in the LifETIME CDT, UoB and UoG
• 2017 - Current: Lecturer and Tutor on the LI/LC Reaction Engineering and Thermodynamics (RET), School of Chemical Engineering, UoB, UK
• 2015 - 2017: Module Coordinator and Lecturer on Chemical and Biological Processes (CBP), Year 1 LI/LC, School of Chemical Engineering, UoB, UK
• 2013 - Current: Lecturer on Engineering and Physical Science for Sci-Phy-4-Health, UoB
• 2014 – Current: Research Projects, MSc Chemical Engineering, UoB
• 2013 - Current: Mini Projects Supervisor, Doctoral EPSRC Training Centre, UoB
• 2014 – Current: Tutor for Chemical Engineering Undergraduate (Year 1-4) Students, UoB
• 2013 – Current: Supervisor of MEng Chemical Engineering Students, UoB
• 2009 - 2012: Demonstrator for Physics Lab, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge
• 2009 – 2010: Invigilator, Churchill College, University of Cambridge, UK
• 2008 – 2009: Lab Demonstrator for Physics Undergraduate Students, University of Cambridge

Pola G. Oppenheimer is interested in supervising doctoral research students in the following areas:

• Design and Fabrication of Micro and Nano-structured Sensing Surfaces
• New Bio-Nanomaterials for Therapeutics and Health Care
• Structural Nanotechnology: Nano-assemblies and Scaffolds
• Structured Carbon Nanotubes & Graphene-Based Devices
• Biommimetics

If you are interested in any of these subject areas please contact Pola Oppenheimer on the contact details above, or for any general doctoral research enquiries, please email: GoldberP:bham.ac.uk or call +44 (0)121 414 5287.

Please visit our website for more details about the ongoing research in our group: www.ANMSA.com.

RESEARCH THEMES

Novel Lithographic Techniques

• Development and implementation of advanced, cost-effective and versatile soft lithography techniques
• Alternative routes capable of more than the generation of patterns below the sub-100 nm to develop tuneable 3D structures

New Bio-Nanomaterials for Therapeutics and Health Care

• A paradigm shift from bulky and expensive diagnostics to rapid real-time chemical and biological detection
• Specific and field-deployable analytical technologies for quick point-of-care medical diagnostics
• Miniaturised and portable therapeutic systems

Structural Nanotechnology for Point-of-Care Diagnostics

• Engineering designed molecules and materials as bottom-up building blocks for large area, highly ordered diverse 3D structures on the nanoscale
• Porous templates for patterning inorganic materials 
• Applications for hybrid photovoltaics, solar cells, electrochromic devices and display technology

Biommimetics

• Bottom-up and top-down fabrication strategies to create new classes of high performance structure
• Mimic the intriguing morphologies and patterns found in nature
• Exploit and implement superior bio-properties

Structured Carbon Nanotubes & Graphene- Based Devices

• Patterning of CNTs into well-ordered arrays for broad range of applications
• Enhanced properties and advanced applications of CNTs /graphene based structured materials

Combining Soft & Hard Matter

• Generate new classes of high-performance carbon nanotubes and nanoparticles -based composite materials
• Development of functional devices for microelectronics, displays and biochemical sensors

Widening Participation

• Professor Oppenheimer is actively involved in substantial public outreach events and has a strong long-term commitment to the broader dissemination of research, evidenced by her public engagement track-record and by associated awards and return on investment. These include, Science-Busking for British Science Association (2012), Physics at Work (2013) at the Cavendish Laboratories University of Cambridge, enthusiasing children and adults about science in a non-academic setting. These targeted a variety of audiences and gave insights into her research, explaining its impact on society, increased public awareness and encouraged the next generation to study Engineering. Further public engagement activities include Engineering stand at the Annual British Science Festival (2015), the University Community Day and the National Big Bang Fair at the NEC (2017).
• Professor Oppenheimer has been selected to present at the National Public Engagement Event, sponsored by the L’Oréal UNESCO, the ‘Soapbox-Science’, in 2016 in London, which was a hub of scientific learning and discussion with the UK’s leading scientists showcase science to the public.
• Since 2016, she has undertaken training programme and become an Academic Science, Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) Ambassador and since then, has been actively giving talks on research and science as well as careers for school pupils. She has also taken an active part in interactive events as part of STEM school demonstrations, assemblies and career days. In 2017, she has participated in the ‘Meet the Experts’ activity at the Think Tank in Birmingham, which was a drop in and talk to scientists and try hands on activities program as a representative professional who works in STEM subjects. This event was a part of the ‘’Explore the Micro World’’ workshop, where young audience were able to explore the “micro-world” with microscopes including a new handheld one projected onto the wall, used lasers to investigate the water of Birmingham and built their own density tower to take home.
• Professor Oppenheimer provided leadership in a range of undergraduate inspired participatory events including at the ‘Think Tank’ Birmingham, RAF100 Centenary Event (2018) and Green-Heart at UoB public event (2019).