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Materials scientist Prof. Dr. Sohini Kar-Narayan will take up her full-time position as the new director of the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems and as a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society with effect from October 1, 2025. Sohini Kar-Narayan heads the new Materials Systems Engineering department and brings her expertise in the field of functionalized materials systems and devices to the Magdeburg institute.
Targeted Design of Novel Material Systems and Functional Devices
The research conducted by Sohini Kar-Narayan focuses on the key question of how the structure and properties of novel material systems are interrelated and how these can be specifically designed to achieve certain functionalities for applications in energy technology, sensor technology, actuator technology, and biomedicine.
The experimental scientist is thus enhancing the research profile of the Max Planck Institute in Magdeburg in the field of systems engineering for functionalized materials. With her research, Sohini Kar-Narayan aims to provide new insights and systems engineering approaches for the extraction, storage, and conversion of renewable energies. Another focus will be on innovative sensors and actuators, which are important components of the next generation of control loop systems.
As Director of the Materials Systems Engineering department at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems, Sohini Kar-Narayan draws on deep expertise and strategic vision shaped by her academic career at the University of Cambridge as Professor of Device Materials in the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy. She brings to the Max Planck Institute a keen interest in interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation in the field of functional nanomaterials and devices, with a particular focus on applications in energy harvesting, smart sensing technology, soft robotics and bioelectronics.
Exploring Properties, Structure and Functionality of Advanced Materials Systems
Her research addresses the fundamental relationship between structure and functionality in advanced materials systems, many with largely unexplored properties. She develops polymer-based piezoelectric, ferroelectric, thermoelectric and electroactive nanostructures that capture and convert ambient waste energy into usable power towards self-sustaining technologies.
For example, she engineered polymer piezoelectric nanowires that self‑align under nanoscale confinement to create scalable, self‑powered sensors. At the same time, she developed bespoke characterization techniques to reveal intriguing electromechanical behaviour in these materials at the nanoscale. She combines deep materials insights with novel additive‑manufacturing workflows to turn nanoscale discoveries into devices - from wearable sweat sensors for remote health monitoring to fully printed ultrathin actuators for soft‑robotic motion control.
Prof. Sohini Kar-Narayan completes the four-member Board of Directors consisting of Prof. Dr. Peter Benner, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Udo Reichl, and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Kai Sundmacher.
With her new department, she succeeds Prof. Dr. Andreas Seidel-Morgenstern, who headed the Department of Physical-Chemical Fundamentals of Process Engineering until 2024 and has been an Emeritus Scientific Member since August 2024.
About Prof. Dr. Sohini Kar-Narayan
Sohini Kar-Narayan is a British-Indian materials scientist, born in Nigeria to Indian parents in 1982, and she grew up there before moving to India to earn her bachelor's degree at Presidency College, University of Calcutta in 2001.
From 2001 to 2008, she was a graduate student at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, earning her Masters degree in 2004 and her doctorate in the field of experimental condensed matter physics in 2009. She moved to the University of Cambridge in the UK in 2008, where she was awarded a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship in 2012. Sohini Kar-Narayan was appointed a lecturer at the University of Cambridge in 2015 and a professor in 2018. She received funding from the European Research Council, including a Starting Grant in 2015 to develop polymer-based piezoelectric nanogenerators and a Consolidator Grant in 2023 to develop bioelectronic devices for remote health monitoring.
Sohini Kar-Narayan is the founding director of ArtioSense Ltd, a spin-off from the University of Cambridge in 2021. The company develops smart sensors to assist in the positioning of orthopaedic implants during joint replacement surgery. This technology won the Armourers & Brasiers' Venture Prize in 2022, the Lee Lucas Award from the Institute of Physics in 2023, and the Cambridge Independent Science and Technology Award for Innovation in 2025.
In 2021, she was recognized as one of the top 50 Most Influential Women in Engineering by the Women’s Engineering Society. In 2023, she received the Peter Day Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2024, she was named Innovator of the Year by Electronics Weekly, and in the same year she was elected a Fellow of the UK's Royal Academy of Engineering. She is also the recipient of the 2025 Royal Microscopical Society AFM & SPM Award.
Sohini Kar-Narayan is editor-in-chief of the journal APL Electronic Devices, published by the American Institute of Physics. She is also a Professorial Fellow of Clare Hall College, Cambridge.
https://www.mpi-magdeburg.mpg.de/2025-10-01-pm-research-focus-sohini-kar-narayan
Materials scientist Prof. Dr. Sohini Kar-Narayan takes up her full-time position as the new director ...
Quelle: Harald Krieg
Copyright: Harald Krieg / Max-Planck-Institut Magdeburg
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