Ravi Silva is a Distinguished Professor and the Director of the Advanced Technology Institute (ATI) at the University of Surrey. He also Heads the Nano-Electronics Centre (NEC), which is an interdisciplinary research activity. The ATI has over 160 active researchers working on multidiscipline programmes with the NEC being a major research group within the institute.

An established member of the University of Surrey’s Sustainability Executive Committee, Ravi has been spearheading the institution’s drive towards Carbon Net Zero, including setting up a solar farm. He has led sustainability work at CAESAR, chairing a session on a Net Zero World in 30 Years and helping to draft the newest guidelines on Key Technologies Shaping the Future. He led a consortium headed by the University of Surrey to be awarded close to ￡3 million to help design perovskite solar cells to power wearable technologies and Internet of Things (IoT) devices in 2022.  

His research has resulted in over 650 presentations at international conferences, and over 600 journal papers, Over 23,500 citations (Google Scholar), and a Google H-factor of 76. Ravi is the inventor of 40 patents, including key patents on low temperature growth of carbon nanotubes, fabrication of high-performance large area X-ray detectors and fabrication of large area nanotube-organic solar cells. He has won research funding in excess of ￡40M and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2021 Queen’s New Year Honours’ list.

Ravi was elected to Distinguished Professorships at Surrey University in 2019, Hubei University - China (2019), Zhengzhou University - China (2018) and Chonbuk National University - South Korea (2013). In March 2018, Ravi was elected the joint Editor-in-Chief of Wiley's Energy and Environmental Materials, while in April 2017, he received an Honorary president letter of appointment as Honorary Director to the Zhengzhou Materials Genome Institute (ZMGI) in China.

Prof. Silva won the James Joule Medal and Award for contributions to the establishment and research on carbon nanomaterials to sustainability given by the Institute of Physics to distinguished contributions to Applied and Environment Sciences in 2018.

In 2016, he received a Government of Sri Lanka Presidential Award in recognition for many contributions in the field of nanotechnology. He has Visiting Professorships at Dalian Technology University and Wuhan University of Technology in China. Since 2017-2024, he has been part of two major EU programmes to establish Organic Solar Cells and Printed Electronics as an open innovation platform in Europe with total grant funding in excess of €12M on CORNET and Musicode.

In 2015, he won the Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining (IOM3) premium award, the Platinum Medal for contributing to materials science, technology and industry. In 2014 he was awarded a premium medal by the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET), the JJ Thompson Medal for contributions to Electrical and Electronic Engineering. In 2011 he was awarded the Royal Society Clifford Patterson Award for outstanding contribution in the fields of carbon nanoscience and nanotechnology.

From 2013-2017, Ravi helped establish the groundwork to set up a €12M EU programme for the development of pilot lines for the deposition of organic materials, with the primary application being cheap large area solar cells. Smartonics led to further EU success with CORNET and Musicode (2017-2024). The Smartonics Project was awarded by EU as the 1st Runner-Up for the Best Project Competition, in recognition of the project's potential impact, dissemination and outreach towards industry and society.

Prof. Silva is a panel member in Engineering for the REF2021 and, in 2009, was elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences Sri Lanka. He was a member of the Electrical and Electronic Panel (UoA24) for the Research Assessment Exercise (2003-2008) RAE2008, EPSRC Nanotechnology Task Force and sat (2007-2010) on the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's (EPSRC) Technology Opportunities Panel (TOP). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, UK, in 2008.

Since 2005 he has worked with the National Science Foundation (NSF), Sri Lanka to establish nanotechnology as a vehicle from which to create wealth for the nation that will allow for poverty alleviation in the country. By introducing high technology into the manufacturing base in Sri Lanka he has spearheaded a drive to introduce innovation and competitiveness into the industrial sector within the country. Prof. Silva was on the advisory board of Imprimatur Ltd and the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) of Sri Lanka. He spent 2008 acting as an Advisor to the Honourable Minister of Science and Technology in Sri Lanka, and helped set up the Sri Lanka Institute of NanoTechnology (SLINTec) and the Nano-Science Park NANCO (private) Ltd. He acts as an advisor to both these activities and sits on the director board.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2007, the same year he was the runner-up of the "Times Higher Education Young Scientist of the Year", and was awarded "Most Entrepreneurial Scientist 2007, United Kingdom", by UKSEC and Science Alliance of the Netherlands. In 2005, the Nano-Electronics Centre was a finalist in the Emerging Technologies category of the IEE 2005 Awards for Innovation in Engineering, just one year after Prof. Silva received a SRIF award for ￡4M to set it up, enabling multidisciplinary research and allowing the enhancement of nano-bio activities via the EU Sensation and EU Carbio programme.

The largest EPSRC Portfolio award was awarded to Prof. Silva and his team in 2003 for ￡6.68M for Integrated Electronics which examined nanoscale design features on the optical and photonic device properties. In 2003 he was also awarded the Albert Einstein Silver Medal and Javed Husain Prize by UNESCO for contributions to electronic devices and was awarded the IEE Achievement Award. In 2002 he was awarded the Charles Vernon Boys Medal by the Institute of Physics.

He joined Surrey in 1995. Ravi's secondary education was in Sri Lanka, after which he joined the Engineering Department at Cambridge University for his undergraduate and postgraduate work. He was a recipient of Cambridge Commonwealth Trust Fellowship while at Cambridge and member of Clare College.