Prof. Dr. Petr Novák
Paul Scherrer Institute

Petr Novák is head of the Section “Electrochemical Energy Storage” of the Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen, Switzerland and Professor at the Laboratory of Inorganic Chemistry of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich).

He has been working in the field of electrochemistry all his professional life, focusing on batteries, mainly lithium-based. In 1983, he joined the J. Heyrovský Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague (with a short period at the Technical University of Linköping, Sweden in 1986; with Olle Inganäs), later as Alexander von Humboldt-Fellow at the University of Bonn, Germany (1988-1989; with Wolf Vielstich).

Since 1991 Professor Novák has been working at the Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland. His research interests span a wide range of topics related to materials’ electrochemistry and interfacial electrochemistry. The dominant topics include nonaqueous electrochemistry, conducting polymers, inorganic electrode materials and organic electrolytes for batteries, interfaces in nonaqueous systems, and especially the development of electrochemical in situ (operando) methods. Apart from many technical reports, he is author or co-author of 13 patents. He has published about 300 papers in leading scientific journals and has collected over 17,000 career citations (Career h‑Index: 57).

Research area

Petr Novák’s research interests include the electrochemistry of lithium-ion batteries. His long-term goal is to develop large lithium-ion batteries for vehicle applications.

Curriculum Vitae

Petr Novák has been a lecturer at the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences since 2002 and an Adjunct Professor at the Laboratory of Inorganic Chemistry since 2009. Professor Novák has also been running the Electrochemical Energy Storage Section (http://www.psi.ch/lec/electrochemical-energy-storage) at the PSI (Paul Scherrer Institut) in Villigen since 2009.

He was born in Brno in the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia) in 1956.

Petr Novák completed his degree in chemistry at the Technical University of Prague (Czech Republic, then Czechoslovakia) in 1980, where he went on to obtain a doctorate in electrochemical engineering three years later. From 1983, he worked as a research scientist at the J. Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Prague for five years. 1988-1989 he worked at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the University of Bonn, Germany.

In 1994, Petr Novák received his habilitation in chemical technology of inorganic materials from the Technical University of Prague. In 1990, he spent a year working as a group leader at the J. Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Prague. From 1991 to 1995, he was a project leader at the PSI before working as a group leader there until 2008.

Honours