Theodosios Famprikis - 'One man’s mess, another man’s material: Exploiting disorder in materials chemistry'

Tuesday, 7 July 2026, 5pm to 6.30pm

Materials are matter with a purpose; that is a set of properties that make them useful, functional and purposeful. The properties of any given material derive from the arrangement and identity of atoms that make it up (structure), and the business of materials chemistry is to understand these structure-property interrelationships and leverage them to design and synthesise new, ever better materials.

​This paradigm has been fruitful for over 100 years, underpinning technology development such as electronics, batteries, plastics, medical implants etc. But it has a glaring blind spot: like people, no material is perfect, and structural imperfections can critically modulate properties (positively or negatively).

​In July's Balliol Online Lecture, Theodosios Famprikis will explore the conceptual advance from tidy, symmetric, ideal materials to messy, disordered and real materials, providing examples of how said disorder can be a feature, not a bug, enabling improvement and control over materials properties.

Theodosios Famprikis is originally from Thessaloniki, Greece. He obtained a BSc in Chemical Engineering from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and subsequently a double MSc in Materials Science from Grenoble INP and TU Darmstadt.

​Theo obtained his PhD in 2020 in Solid-State Chemistry and Materials Science from the University of Picardie for work on ion conductors for solid-state batteries supervised by Profs. Christian Masquelier and M. Saiful Islam in the context of the ALISTORE ERI (alistore.eu). After a short stay with Prof. Wolfgang Zeier in Giessen, he joined the group of Prof. Marnix Wagemaker in TU Delft where he was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship.

​In 2024 he moved to Oxford where he holds a Royal Society Newton International Fellowship in the Department of Chemistry and the Malcolm Green Early Career Fellowship in Inorganic Chemistry at Balliol College.

Series: Balliol Online Lecture Series

Department: Balliol College (College)

Organiser: Balliol College

Host: Balliol College

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/9717794456362/WN_n8uhnCVhSm65cN6kUyQWdQ