Professor Mark Welland, former Editor-in-Chief of the IOP Publishing journal, Nanotechnology, has been awarded a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.
Sir Mark is one of Nanotechnology’s most read and cited authors, and he remains on the Editorial Board of the journal, which celebrated its 20th year of publication in 2010.
Presently, Welland is on secondment to the Ministry of Defence as Chief Scientific Adviser, where he directs the science and technology programme, chairs the Investment Approvals Board that authorises all major capital procurement projects and acts as the Principal of the 1958 Mutual Defence Agreement between the US and the UK on nuclear matters.
He remains Professor of Nanotechnology at the University of Cambridge, UK, where he established the Cambridge Nanoscience Centre — a 1800 m2 purpose-built research facility completed in January 2003 for conducting far-reaching and interdisciplinary research in the field of nanotechnology. Current research topics include prosthetic skin, oxide-based nanostructures, and advanced scanning probe microscopy techniques.
Sir Mark started his career in nanoscience and nanotechnology at IBM Research Laboratories, Yorktown Heights, US, where he was part of the team that developed one of the first scanning tunnelling microscopes.