Robert Mokaya

Robert Minge Mokaya is a Kenyan-British chemist and President of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He is the first Black President in the Society's 185-year history Prior to that he was Provost and Deputy-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Sheffield, where he remains an Emeritus Professor. Mokaya holds a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award.

Early life and education Mokaya was born in Kenya. He attended the University of Nairobi, where he specialised in chemistry. He moved to the University of Cambridge for his graduate studies, where he worked in the laboratory of William "Bill" Jones. After graduating, Mokaya was awarded a junior research fellowship, and started his independent career at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Research and career In 1996 Mokaya was named an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Advanced Fellow, and by 2000 he had been made a lecturer at the University of Nottingham. In 2017 Mokaya was awarded a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.

He investigates novel materials for carbon sequestration, focusing primarily on hydrogen fuel cells. Mokaya considers porous materials and their structure-property relationships. Nanostructured porous materials contain significant internal volume, which can be used for enhanced gas storage. Amongst these, Mokaya has studied mesoporous molecular sieves, porous carbons and zeolite templated carbons. He forms the nanoporous carbons by filling organic materials into porous inorganic structures, then heating them to the temperature at which they turn into pure carbon.

Mokaya was appointed Pro Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement at the University of Nottingham in 2019. He was part of a Royal Society programme to strengthen the capacity of African researchers to design, synthesise and optimise porous materials.

In June 2024 Mokoya took up the post of Provost and Deputy-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Sheffield.

On September 1, 2025 Mokoya stepped down from his role at the University of Sheffield to focus on other activities. In 2023, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).

Mokaya is the only black chemistry professor in the United Kingdom and stated that UK Research and Innovation has rejected all of his funding applications.

Selected publications