ProfessorJoselito Razal

Professor Joselito M. Razal (Joe), Director of the ARC Hub for Future Fibres and Deputy Director of the Institute for Frontier Materials at Deakin University, is dedicated to revitalising Australia's fibre industry and re-establishing its global leadership position. Using the Lab to Label™ concept, his team is creating pathways to make scientific innovations readily accessible to industry and the broader public.

Joe is renowned for his research on novel functional and sustainable materials for flexible energy storage and energy harvesting systems. He focuses on multifunctional fibres capable of storing and converting energy, as well as sensing external stimuli such as movement and pressure. These materials have applications in wearable devices, portable electronics, and smart textiles. His fundamental research centres on the study of low-dimensional materials, including carbon nanotubes, graphene, and MXenes. His team develops novel synthetic methods, solution-based processing strategies, and advanced characterisation techniques to create and design new architectures, investigating their properties and behaviour in relevant dynamic environments. His groundbreaking discoveries on carbon nanotubes, graphene, MXenes, and liquid crystals have paved the way for the solution-based processing of these materials into 3D printed structures, aerogel monoliths, free-standing thin films, and nano- and microfibres with numerous unusual properties. He has published in flagship journals such as Nature, Science, Advanced Materials, Advanced Energy Materials, Energy & Environmental Science, Joule and Device.