Professor Max Lu is President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Surrey. He is a member of the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology, and is on the Boards of UKRI, the National Physical Laboratory, Universities UK, and the Leadership Council of the National Centre for Universities and Business. Locally, he also serves as Deputy Lieutenant of Surrey and a patron of the charity Transform.
Professor Lu lectured at Nanyang Technological University from 1991 to 1994. He then held various academic and leadership positions at the University of Queensland, eventually serving as Provost and Senior Vice-President, before arriving at Surrey in April 2016.
At Queensland, Professor Lu founded the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Functional Nanomaterials, and served as its director for eight years. He was awarded the Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship in 2003 and in 2008.
A pre-eminent chemical engineer and nanotechnologist, Professor Lu is a double highly cited academic in the world. He has published over 500 peer-reviewed articles in top journals, with 59,400 citations and h-index of 121.
He is co-inventor of more than 20 granted international patents, and has been honoured with numerous awards including, recently, the Medal of the Order of Australia for his distinguished service to education, international research and Sino-Australian relations.