Maria Skyllas-Kazacos AM FTSE (born 26 October 1951) is an Australian

chemical engineer In the field of engineering, a chemical engineer is a professional, equipped with the knowledge of chemical engineering, who works principally in the chemical industry to convert basic raw materials into a variety of products and deals with the ...

best known for her pioneering work of the

vanadium redox battery The vanadium redox battery (VRB), also known as the vanadium flow battery (VFB) or vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB), is a type of rechargeable flow battery. It employs vanadium ions as charge carriers. The battery uses vanadium's ability t ...

, which she created at the

University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-intensive ...

in the 1980s.M. Rychcik and M. Skyllas-Kazacos, J. Power Sources, 22 (1988) 59–67 Her design used sulfuric acid electrolytes and was patented by the university. In 1999 she was appointed a

Member of the Order of Australia The Order of Australia is an honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, on the advice of the Australian Gove ...

"for service to science and technology, particularly in the development of the vanadium redox battery as an alternative power source". She is an emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales.

Early life

Skyllas-Kazacos was born as Maria Skyllas in

Kalymnos Kalymnos ( el, Κάλυμνος) is a Greek island and municipality in the southeastern Aegean Sea. It belongs to the Dodecanese island chain, between the islands of Kos (south, at a distance of ) and Leros (north, at a distance of less than ): t ...

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...

, in 1951 and emigrated to

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

in 1954. She is the oldest of four siblings. She attended Fort Street Girls High School in

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

, before beginning a degree in industrial chemistry at the University of New South Wales. She graduated with first class honours and the

University Medal A University Medal is one of several types of award conferred by universities upon outstanding students or members of staff. The usage and status of university medals differ between countries and between universities. As award on graduation Many ...

in 1974. She completed her PhD in 1978 at the UNSW School of Chemical Technology on the topic of the electrochemistry of molten salts.

Career

After finishing her PhD, Skyllas received a

CSIRO The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government, is the national government of Australia, a federal parliamentar ...

Postdoctoral Fellowship and joined

Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

in the US for her post-doctoral work. While completing her postdoctoral fellowship at Bell Labs, Skyllas did research on

solar energy Solar energy is radiant light and heat from the Sun that is harnessed using a range of technologies such as solar power to generate electricity, solar thermal energy (including solar water heating), and solar architecture. It is an essenti ...

and focused on the liquid junction solar cell. She researched ways of depositing thin films. She received a patent for a new method of electrodepositing thin films of

cadmium selenide Cadmium selenide is an inorganic compound with the formula Cadmium, CdSelenide, Se. It is a black to red-black solid that is classified as a II-VI semiconductor of the n-type semiconductor, n-type. Much of the current research on this compound i ...

. Since Bell labs had to service

Bell Telephone Company The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 9, 1877, by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company – the New Englan ...

, Skyllas also did work on batteries. While assisting on experiments with a problem of lead-acid batteries, she discovered soluble lead(IV) ions in the charging and discharging reactions of the lead-acid batteries. She published a paper on this discovery in the ''Journal of the Electrochemical Society''. After giving a poster presentation in Australia on the same subject, she was awarded the Bloom-Gutmann Prize for the best young author under 30. After leaving Bell Labs, Skyllas went back to Australia and accepted a position as a Queen Elizabeth II Fellow in the School of Physics at the University of New South Wales. In 1982, aged 31, she became a professor in

chemical engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials int ...

and industrial chemistry. Skyllas married Michael Kazacos, who is also a scientist, and they have three children. At the University of New South Wales, Skyllas-Kazacos and her research team began working on

vanadium Vanadium is a chemical element with the symbol V and atomic number 23. It is a hard, silvery-grey, malleable transition metal. The elemental metal is rarely found in nature, but once isolated artificially, the formation of an oxide layer ( pas ...

compounds. She discovered that highly concentrated pentavalent solutions can be prepared indirectly from tetravalent ions, which is more soluble, combined with scraping of the carbon electrode that made the vanadium oxidation-reduction reactions reversible. Skyllas with her research team then patented the

in 1988.

Awards

''Source:'' * Whiffen Medal,

Institution of Chemical Engineers The Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) is a global professional engineering institution with over 33,000 members worldwide. It was founded in 1922 and awarded a Royal Charter in 1957. It has offices in Rugby, London, Melbourne, Wellingto ...

Australia, 1997 * CHEMECA Medal, Institution of Chemical Engineers Australia, 1998 *

, Australia Day Honours List, 1999SKYLLAS-KAZACOS, Maria - Member of the Order of Australia (AM)
26 January 1999, It's an Honour * R.K. Murphy Medal, Royal Australian Chemical Institute, 2000 * Recipient, Distinguished Lecturer Award, Pacific Northwest National Laboratories, Richland, US, 2009 * Co-Recipient, Light Metals Division Journal of Metals Best Paper Award, 2009 * Invested as Grand Lady of the Byzantine Order of St Eugene of Trebizond, Australia Day, 2009 * Castner Medal, Society for the Chemical Industry, UK, 2011 * Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, 2014

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Skyllas-Kazacos, Maria Australian women chemists Australian women engineers Members of the Order of Australia Australian chemical engineers Australian people of Greek descent 1951 births Living people Fellows of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering 21st-century women engineers Chemical engineering academics