Driven by curiosity. Driving changeBiography
Professor Alexei Lapkin leads the Sustainable Reaction Engineering group in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on devising and developing cleaner manufacturing processes for the chemical industries.
Alexei obtained his MChem from Novosibirsk State University in 1994, followed by a PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Bath in 2000. He worked as a researcher at Boreskov Institute of Catalysis in Novosibirsk, Russia from 1994 to 1997.
He co-leads the Innovation Centre in Digital Molecular Technologies (iDMT), a research hub that focuses on accelerating access to medicines, monomers, polymers and other molecular materials through machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotics. He is also a co-Director (entrepreneurship) of the Cambridge Centre for Advanced Research and Education in Singapore (CARES).
Alexei joined the University of Cambridge in 2013 and is a Governing Body Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.
Research interests
- Development of innovative digital technologies to address sustainability challenges in the chemical industries
- Liquid and multi-phase catalytic and biochemical processes
- Development and implementation of new sustainable chemical manufacturing processes
Professor Lapkin’s group currently focuses on the development of innovative digital technologies such as machine learning methods and Big Data approaches to the design of chemical reactions, products and manufacturing processes.
Awards and achievements
- Governing Body Fellow – Wolfson College, Cambridge
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
- 2025 International Francqui Chair at KU Leuven
Teaching and supervision
Professor Lapkin teaches and supervises across undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
Professor Alexei Lapkin
Professor of Sustainable Reaction Engineering
Sustainable Reaction Engineering research group leader Co-lead of the iDMT Co-director of CARES