Prof. Simon Redfern
<p class=”size-20 bld-sm fst-italic title text-capitalize mb20″>Professor; President’s Chair in Earth Sciences</p>
<p class=”size-20 bld-sm fst-italic title text-capitalize mb20″>Nanyang Technological University</p>
<p class=”people-email”><i class=”fas fa-envelope size-22 mr10″></i><a href=”mailto:simon.redfern@ntu.edu.sg” class=”size-18″>simon.redfern@ntu.edu.sg</a></p>
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President’s Chair in Earth Sciences in the Asian School of the Environment, Dean of the College of Science
Professor Redfern is a mineralogist, trained as a crystallographer, who is interested in the links between atomic scale structure and the physical and chemical properties of planetary materials, from Earth’s oceans to its core. His scientific research career, focussed on mineral sciences and more broadly within geosciences, spans more than 35 years. He completed his PhD in 1989 at the University of Cambridge, Department of Earth Sciences, and until 2019 has held a full time academic appointment in a UK HEI. Initially, upon graduating with his PhD, he was appointed in 1989 at the University of Manchester as Lecturer in Geochemical Spectroscopy joint between Geology and Chemistry. Subsequently, in 1994, he returned to Cambridge as a Lecturer in the Department of Earth Sciences, and was then promoted to Reader and then Professor. In 2016 I he became Head of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge. He left Cambridge in 2019 to move to NTU and take up the post of President’s Chair in Earth Sciences, alongside the role of Dean of the College of Science. He is an Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, University of Cambridge.
He is the recipient of the European Mineralogical Society’s Medal for Research Excellence and is the only individual to have been awarded both the Max Hey and Schlumberger Medals of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, of which he is a Fellow. He is also Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America and of the Geological Society of London. Professor Redfern is keen to translate scientific discovery to wider audiences and served as a British Science Association Media Fellow working alongside journalists at the BBC for some time. He was also a member of the UK ministerially-appointed Committee on Radioactive Waste Management charged with providing independent scrutiny of the development of a geological radioactive waste repository in the UK.
Research Interests
Professor Redfern’s research interests focus on the physical and chemical properties of minerals and associated fluids in planetary interiors. He uses experimental and computational methods to understand the role of minerals in Earth and planetary processes at extreme pressures and temperatures. I has published more than 270 peer-reviewed papers in the scientific literature (H-index 46 [ISI], 54 [Google Scholar]), in internationally leading journals including Nature, Science, Physical Review Letters, Advanced Materials, Earth and Planetary Sciences Letters, JACS, Applied Physics Letters, and GRL. His research is highly inter-disciplinary and he has as many papers in the materials physics/chemistry literature as in geosciences.
Selected Publications
- Cai, X., Yi, W., Chen, J., Lu, L., Sun, B., Ni, Y., … & Chen, Y. (2022). A novel 2D porous C3N2 framework as a promising anode material with ultra-high specific capacity for lithium-ion batteries. Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 10(12), 6551-6559. doi: 10.1039/d1ta10877h
- Farsang, S., Louvel, M., Zhao, C., Mezouar, M., Rosa, A. D., Widmer, R. N., … & Redfern, S. A. (2021). Deep carbon cycle constrained by carbonate solubility. Nature Communications, 12(1), 1-9. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-24533-7
- Xia, K., Chen, Q., Gao, H., Feng, X., Yuan, J., Liu, C., … & Sun, J. (2021). Icosahedral silicon boride : a potential hybrid photovoltaic-thermoelectric for energy harvesting. Physical Review Materials, 5(11), 115402. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.5.115402
- Farsang, S., Louvel, M., Rosa, A. D., Amboage, M., Anzellini, S., Widmer, R. N., & Redfern, S. A. (2021). Effect of salinity, pressure and temperature on the solubility of smithsonite (ZnCO3) and Zn complexation in crustal and upper mantle hydrothermal fluids. Chemical Geology, 578, 120320. doi: 10.1016/j.chemgeo.2021.120320
- Feng, X., Steiner, Z., & Redfern, S. A. (2021). Fluorine incorporation into calcite, aragonite and vaterite CaCO3: Computational chemistry insights and geochemistry implications. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 308, 384-392. doi: 10.1016/j.gca.2021.05.029
