Exeter Fellow Professor Philipp Kukura awarded Royal Society Faraday Discovery Fellowship

Exeter College Official Fellow and Lecturer in Physical Chemistry and Professor of Chemistry, Philipp Kukura, has been awarded a prestigious Royal Society Faraday Discovery Fellowship. 

The Faraday Discovery Fellowships support exceptional mid-career research leaders to undertake high-quality, original research and build world-leading science teams in the UK. Fellows receive grants of up to £8 million over 10 years. Professor Kukura is one of only nine researchers selected this year from more than 280 initial applications. 

Professor Kukura will use the grant to develop a new technology for measuring the mass of individual molecules. The project aims to uncover processes that control how life functions, understand what goes wrong in disease and identify new approaches to treatment. 

The new experimental platform will initially focus on two processes: how biomolecules self-assemble into objects resembling viruses, which could potentially help improve cell and gene therapies; and the mechanism by which biomolecules are targeted for destruction, a process that could potentially be harnessed to remove disease-associated molecules. 

Professor Kukura said: “I am incredibly grateful for this award – it gives the team at Oxford and our collaborators the time and security to really challenge the status quo and make a step change in our ability to understand biological function and regulation, and thereby optimise routes to intervention.” 

Professor Kukura and his team are based at Oxford University’s Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery, an interdisciplinary research institute spanning the life, medical and physical sciences. 

Further information about the 2026 Faraday Discovery Fellowships is available on the Royal Society website, and more about Professor Kukura can be found on his Exeter College profile. 

Exeter College warmly congratulates Professor Kukura on his award.