In 2001, the University of Manchester made one of the most strategic hires in the last twenty years, appointing physicist and graphene pioneer Andre Geim to his first full Professorship. Back then, when the University hired him, Geim had a very solid but not spectacular track record - with less than 1000 career citations to his name. Just under a decade later in 2010, Geim and his former student and long-time research partner Konstantin Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
The spectacular success of Sir Andre Geim and his colleagues at Manchester has helped catapult the University's already great and growing reputation and ranking in the world's leagues tables building on its merger in 2004 of two predecessor institutions to now rank among the World's Top 40 Research Universities. The strength of the talent-base at the University of Manchester who are now home to over 100 of the world's leading nanotechnology, materials science and graphene researchers - the largest cohort at any University in the world and who now have attracted over $200m in R&D investments from the public and private sector.
