Gunnar Westin

Ph.D. 1995 and Docent 1998 at Stockholm University moved his group to Uppsala University during the year 2000 taking a Senior Lecturer position in Chemical nanotechnology. He became a Professor in the same area in 2006. He also held a part time position at ABB Corporate Research in 2002-2003, implementing solution processing. His research stretches from fundamental to applied and involves all steps of solution based materials synthesis; from design of molecular heterometallic alkoxide precursors, via solution processing, to studies of the target ceramic, composite and metallic materials. The focus is on complex composition and shape nanomaterials, such as thin films, ultra thin coatings, sponges and compacts with applications in renewable energy, electro-ceramics, multiferroics and hard materials.
Several of the invented processes have been up-scaled together with industry and one is applied globally in large scale; the superior hardness and toughness WC-Co composites used in mining, drilling and infrastructure excavation. Another example of up-scaling is the low cost roll-to-roll process for Ni-Al2O3 nanocomposite films with record high solar thermal absorption efficiency.
Westin pioneered the area of sol-gel processing in Sweden during his graduate student time, building a research laboratory and group from scratch after his own ideas. He has been the leader of a large number of academic and industry projects and executive board member and area manager of a competence centre. Westin has published 80+ journal papers, 7 patent families and given 175+ talks (Last 5 years; 40 invited/keynote/tutorial talks at international conferences) He served as a member of the board of directors of the International Sol-Gel Society 2004-2009, is Editorial board member of Int. J. Nanotechnology, Composites B J. and Associate editor of Int. J. Nanoscience, and reviewer for 25+ journals. He has co-/organised 20+ international conferences and served in review panels in Sweden and Europe and reviewed applications for grants and positions for a number of international Science organisations.