The Scholarship, which is worth £10,000, is awarded by the IET to a doctoral researcher conducting outstanding work at a university with an international reputation for research.
“I feel excited and deeply honoured to have won the IET Postgraduate Scholarship. Receiving such a prestigious award from one of the largest multidisciplinary engineering institutions in the world is a high honour, which has given me confidence in my chosen research path and the promise it holds for improving the quality of our everyday life,” said Rigas.
Rigas is based jointly at Surrey’s ATI (Advanced Technology Institute) and the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), and is conducting research into printed nanoelectronics for next generation devices.
He is said to have developed the smallest ink-jet printed nanowire transistor, which opens the door to applications such as miniature cancer detectors, hazardous gas sensors and nano-photovoltaic energy harvesters.
Rigas has also demonstrated a novel method of spray-painting semiconducting crystals directly onto a surface, potentially offering a lower cost, more flexible method than silicon-based semiconductors.
“Winning such a prestigious prize is a great honour and acknowledgment of the high-quality and challenging work done by Greg at both NPL and Surrey,” commented Dr Fernando Castro, Rigas' PhD supervisor at NPL. “It will certainly inspire the next generation of engineers working at the forefront of measurement science applied to advanced manufacturing of electronic materials and devices.”