Rate My Professor Vas Stavros

Professor Vasilios Stavros is Professor of Physical Chemistry and Deputy Head of School in the School of Chemistry at the University of Birmingham, a position he assumed in January 2023 concurrently with a Royal Society Industry Fellowship. He obtained his BSc in Chemical Sciences in 1995 and PhD in Chemical Physics in 1999 from King's College London, supervised by Professor Helen Fielding. Stavros completed postdoctoral positions at King's College London, the University of Oxford with Professors John Simons FRS and Mark Brouard, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley with Professor Steve Leone from 2002 to 2005. In 2005, he returned to the UK as a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Warwick, advancing to Assistant Professor in 2005, Associate Professor in 2009, Reader in 2013, and Professor in 2017.

Stavros's research centers on ultrafast photochemistry and photophysics, investigating excited-state dynamics in photoexcited molecules, photoisomerisation, molecular light-to-heat converters, and photoprotection mechanisms in natural and synthetic UV filters and sunscreens. Prominent publications encompass 'Direct structural observation of ultrafast photoisomerisation dynamics in sinapate esters' (Communications Chemistry, 2022), 'Towards developing novel and sustainable molecular light-to-heat converters' (Chemical Science, 2021), 'Towards symmetry driven and nature inspired UV filter design' (Nature Communications, 2019), 'Probing the ultrafast energy dissipation mechanism of the sunscreen oxybenzone after UVA irradiation' (Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, 2015), and 'Photoprotection: extending lessons learned from studying natural sunscreens to the design of artificial sunscreen constituents' (Chemical Society Reviews, 2017). He has garnered major awards including the 2025 Royal Society of Chemistry Faraday Horizon Prize leading the BoostCrop consortium, RSC Bourke-Liversidge Award (2022), RSC Dalton Division Horizon Team Prize (2022), Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship (2017), and Fellowship of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2012). Stavros chairs the RSC Faraday Division Special Interest Group on Spectroscopy and Dynamics, serves on editorial boards for Molecular Physics and Proceedings of the Royal Society, and has delivered over 100 invited lectures. His scholarship, exceeding 5,700 citations, profoundly shapes advancements in bio-inspired photoprotection and sustainable applications in skincare and agrochemicals.