The Royal Society’s Clifford Paterson Medal and Lecture 2026 awarded to Professor Philipp Kukura FRS

Kavli Oxford's Professor of Chemistry, Philipp Kukura FRS, is awarded the Clifford Paterson Medal and Lecture by the Royal Society, for pioneering and democratising mass photometry, a novel means of mass measurement for single biomolecules. Philipp was elected as Fellow of the Royal Society earlier this year.

The annual Royal Society Awards recognise exceptional research achievements through a series of prestigious medals and prizes. Philipp joins four Oxford University researchers for their outstanding contributions to scientific discovery, public engagement and research culture. Read more about the Oxford awardees here.

Philipp said,

I am delighted to receive this honour, a recognition of the advances in life science research that are being enabled by breakthroughs in fundamental physical sciences.

Philipp develops new optical methods that allow us to understand the basis of biomolecular function and regulation. Currently, his focus is mass photometry, light-scattering-based detection, imaging, and mass measurement of single biomolecules in solution. These approaches are used to "weigh" biomolecules, by assessing them one at a time, with this information then applied to find out what they are made of and how they interact. This can help us to understand how processes in a healthy body work, and what changes in the context of disease. Ultimately, this could help design new routes to intervention.

Based at Kavli Oxford, a highly interdisciplinary environment spanning departments, disciplines and divisions, Philipp fosters a strongly collaborative approach to research. His current work falls into two major categories, evolving mass photometry from a technological perspective to enable access to the full breath of biomolecular interactions, and the development of new assays to provide unique insight into biomolecular mechanisms.

Since April 2021, Oxford University's KAVLI Institute for Nanoscience Discovery is proudly serving as a hub for research groups from seven different departments spanning both the medical and physical sciences, including the Kukura Group from the Department of Chemistry