2025 Science Impact Award winner: Dr Fabrizia Foglia from University College London
19 Mar 2025 - Rosie de Laune
Fabrizia wins the prize for her innovative use of neutron techniques to understand and improve the performance of membrane nanotechnologies for sustainable applications.
Ion-conducting polymer membranes are essential in many separation processes and electrochemical devices, including flow batteries, fuel cells and electrolysers. All of these applications are relevant for achieving Net Zero carbon emissions.
Dr Foglia has made significant contributions to understanding how morphology and local dynamics influence transport in the nanostructures of these membranes for fuel cell and filtration applications. She has been instrumental in expanding the use of neutron techniques in membrane science, including reflectometry, quasielastic neutron scattering and small angle neutron scattering.
This use of neutron science has provided new insights to better understand and optimise membrane properties, addressing industrial requirements and demands in fields as diverse as energy conversion in solar cells and separation science for water desalination.
Her contributions include a recent study published in Nature, the results of which should make it possible to build longer lasting and more cost- and energy-efficient devices such as flow batteries, a promising technology for long-duration grid-scale energy storage.
Her previous work has also included the use of neutron techniques to provide insights into the ion-transport mechanisms within the polymer electrolyte membranes used in fuel cells, enabling the design of new and improved formulations.
Dr Foglia’s research spans beyond clean energy, including the use of neutrons to study the behaviour of water in live bacterial cells. Understanding the biochemical reactions and transport processes within cells, which are determined by the intracellular water pressure, could lead to a better understanding of how bacteria behave under different conditions.
As well as using ISIS, Dr Foglia is a regular user of neutron facilities around the world, as the techniques enable a fundamental understanding of molecular-level assembly mechanisms and pathways from both a structural and dynamics point of view.
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