Ellen Moons

Ellen Moons is a Belgian materials scientist who is a professor at Karlstad University. Her research considers the organisation of molecules and materials in thin films. She is mainly interested in organic and hybrid materials for solution processed photovoltaics.

Early life and education Moons is from Belgium. As an undergraduate, she studied physics at Ghent University. After finishing her physics studies with a licentiate degree, she was awarded a scholarship by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and spent half a year at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. These thin film photovoltaics have lower costs than silicon based devices, and have a small carbon footprint. Moons was a postdoctoral researcher at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and at the Delft University of Technology from 1996 to 1998. Her research considered dye-sensitised solar cells.

In 1998, Moons worked as a research associate at the University of Cambridge, and worked alongside Richard Friend.. During this time she held a joint position as a research scientist at Cambridge Display Technology, 1998-2000, where she worked on polymer light-emitting diodes. Since October 2000 she is affiliated to Karlstad University in Sweden.

She has been elected to the position of Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences starting in 2026.

Research and career

Moons joined Karlstad University in 2000. In 2011 she was awarded the Göran Gustafsson Prize. At the time, Karlstad primarily focussed on polymer-based photovoltaics. Moons expanded this research area, introducing new materials and investigations into structure-property relationships. Moons works to understand degradation mechanisms within emerging energy materials in an effort to improve device performance, stability and lifetime.

Moons' group have helped to correlate solar cell morphology with performance. In particular, she helped to explain how the donor and acceptor domains that form within the active layers of solar cells during solution processing impact their performance. Her work on morphology was supported by the K. A. Wallenberg foundation. As part of this role, she served on the Nobel Committee for Physics and delivered a YouTube lesson describing the science that won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics. Since 1 January 2026, she is the Secretary General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. She is the first woman to hold this position since the founding of the society in 1739.

Selected publications