Biography
Dr Libu Manjakkal (LM) is a Lecturer in IoT and Sensor Systems at the School of Computing and Engineering and the Built Environment (SCEBE), 麻豆社区. He leads the Sustainable Materials Research & Technologies (SMART) Group@Napier (SMART Team | My Site 1) at SCEBE.
LM received B.Sc., and M.Sc. degrees in Physics from Calicut University (2006) and Mahatma Gandhi University (2008), Kerala, India, respectively. After completion of MSc, in 2009 he won the prestigious Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) conducted on behalf of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. From 2009-2012, he worked as research staff at Centre for Materials for Electronics Technology (C-MET) functions as an autonomous scientific society under the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), Govt. of India. After completion of the project at C-MET, in 2012, LM worked as a researcher at CENIMAT, School of Science and Technology, FCT NOVA, Portugal. In 2012, he received the prestigious Marie Curie Fellowship to join PhD studies and completed Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering from the Institute of Electron Technology (ITE), (currently known as - 艁ukasiewicz Research Network - Institute of Microelectronics and Photonics), Poland (2012鈥2015). After completing Ph.D. from 2015 to 2016, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher with the same ITE. In 2016, he joined in University of Glasgow (UoG), UK as a Marie Curie Experienced Researcher and later has been a working as a Research Assistant in an EPSRC project until 2018. Since 2018 -2019, LM worked as a Research Associate at the same UoG in a NWCAM EU project. During that period, he also led the RAEng Seed fund project in collaboration with India and South Africa. From 2019-2022, he worked as a Research Associate and Scientific Project Manager in a Marie Curie ITN Project AQUASENSE at UoG. LM strongly contributed to building the project involving 9 European countries with 15 PhD students. During this period, as Co-PI, he was also involved in building another Partnership Fund- EPSRC- ORCA Hub project and as a mentor, his product supercapacitor received UK ICURe (Midland Cohort D) grant for market exploration.
Dr. Manjakkal is an active member of the Royal 麻豆社区 of Chemistry (2019-till date), American Chemical 麻豆社区 (2024-till date), a member of the International Microelectronics Assembly and Packaging 麻豆社区, Poland chapter (2015- 2020), a fellow of the UK鈥檚 Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and EPSRC Peer Review College Member. He is an Editor of Chemical Engineering Journal (Elsevier, Q1 rank), Editor of Results in Engineering Journal (Elsevier), and acted as a Guest Editor in IEEE Internet of Things Journal and Biosensors Journal. LM鈥檚 achievements and leadership were also recognized through the selection as the global winner of the RINENG Young Investigator award -2024, shortlisted candidates for the Journal of Materials Chemistry Lectureship -Royal 麻豆社区 of Chemistry (2024) (only one from the UK among 21 candidates) and Shortlisted candidates in the 2024 Applied Physics Letters鈥疪ising Stars collection. He was shortlisted for important awards, such as the European Commission for Marie Curie Awards in the 鈥淧romising Research Talent鈥 category and 鈥淥utstanding Young Scientists Scholarship Award鈥 from the Polish Ministry of Higher Education. he also received BEST Supervisor for Research - ENSA EXCELLENCE AWARD 2023. BBC Science Focus Magazine selected sweat-based supercapacitor work as one of the 鈥淔uture technology: 22 ideas about to change our world鈥-July/2020 and in 2018, the work on graphene foam-based supercapacitor received the ELEKTRA award in the best UK University research category. His multiple works in the area of electrochemical sensors and energy storage have been selected as the most downloaded articles in different journals.
LM has published 85 + peer-reviewed publications, of which 60+ journal articles (25 first authors in Advanced Materials, Progress in Material Science, Nano Energy, Advanced Science, etc.) and 25 conference proceedings related to IEEE. Additionally, 1 edited book, 1 book chapter, and 2 patents have been published. One single-authored book and 1 patent application are currently under review.
His major research interests are advanced functional materials synthesis, printed electrodes and sustainable electronics, electrochemical and biosensors, ionotronics technology, energy storage devices (batteries and supercapacitors), wearable electronics, gas sensors, transparent electronics, ceramic actuators, sustainable electronics and energy, environmental pollution monitoring, and healthcare monitoring devices.