Sohini Kar-Narayan takes up her position as the new director at the Max Planck Institute in Magdeburg
Prof. Dr. Sohini Kar-Narayan will take up her full-time position as the new director of the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems and as a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society with effect from October 1, 2025. The materials scientist heads the new Materials Systems Engineering department and brings her expertise in the field of functionalized materials systems and devices to the Magdeburg institute.
Sohini Kar-Narayan researches, how the structure and properties of novel material systems are interrelated and how these can be specifically designed to achieve certain functionalities for applications in energy technology, sensor technology, actuator technology, and biomedicine. In her new position, Sohini Kar-Narayan can draw on the in-depth expertise and strategic concepts she acquired during her academic career as Professor of Device Materials at the Institute of Materials Science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge. Her focus of interest is particularly on applications in energy harvesting, smart sensing technology, soft robotics and bioelectronics. Sohini Kar-Narayan develops polymer-based piezoelectric, ferroelectric, thermoelectric and electroactive nanostructures that capture and convert ambient waste energy into usable power towards self-sustaining technologies.
Prof. Sohini Kar-Narayan completes the four-member Board of Directors consisting of CDS directors Prof. Dr. Peter Benner and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Kai Sundmacher, as well as CDS member Prof. Dr.-Ing. Udo Reichl. She succeeds CDS member Prof. Dr. Andreas Seidel-Morgenstern, who headed the Department of Physical-Chemical Fundamentals of Process Engineering until 2024 and has been an Emeritus Scientific Member since August 2024.
Sohini Kar-Narayan is a British-Indian materials scientist born in Nigeria in 1982 to Indian parents. She received her bachelor's degree in 2001 from the Presidency University in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) in India. In 2009, she completed her doctorate in the field of experimental condensed matter physics at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru. She then moved to the University of Cambridge in the UK. In 2018, she became a professor at the University of Cambridge.
Sohini Kar-Narayan has received numerous awards for her work. Among other honors, she was named one of the top 50 Most Influential Women in Engineering by the Women’s Engineering Society in 2021 and received the 2025 AFM & SPM Award from the Royal Microscopical Society.
Sohini Kar-Narayan is editor-in-chief of the journal APL Electronic Devices, published by the American Institute of Physics. She is also a Professorial Fellow of Clare Hall College, Cambridge.
To the official press release of the Max Planck Institute Magdeburg