Uri Banin is the incumbent of the Alfred & Erica Larisch Memorial Chair at the Institute of Chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU). Dr. Banin was the founding director of the Harvey M. Kreuger Family Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (2001-2010). He led the program of the nanoscience initiative at the Hebrew University, in the frame of the Israel National Nanotechnology Initiative (2007-2010). Banin served on the University's Executive Committee and on its board of managers. He served as a member of the board of Yissum (technology transfer company of HU), served on the scientific advisory board of Nanosys Incorportaed, and served on the editorial board of the journal Nanotechnology. Banin was a member of the Maidan Committee on nanotechnology in Israel (2002). In 2009 Banin was the scientific founder of Qlight Nanotech, a start-up company based on his inventions and developing the use of nanocrystals in display and lighting applications. Since 2013 Banin is an Associate Editor of the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters. His distinctions include the Rothschild postdoctoral fellowship (1994-1995), and a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship (1994-1996). Banin was awarded the Alon fellowship for young faculty from the Israeli board of higher education (1997-2000), received the Yoram Ben-Porat prize from The Hebrew University (2000), was awarded the Israel Chemical Society prize for a young scientist (2001), and is a recipient of the Michael Bruno Memorial Award (2007-2010). He received the European Research Council (ERC) advanced investigator grant, to perform research on doping, charge and energy transfer in hybrid nanocrystal systems (2010-2015). In 2013, Banin was the first recipient of the Lea Tenne prize for Nanoscale Science. In 2018 Prof. Banin recieved Israel Chemical Society Award for Outstanding Scientist. Banin's research focuses on nanoscience and nanotechnology of nanocrystals. He authored over 190 scientific publications in this field that have been extensively cited, and impacted various areas of science and technology of nanocrystals.

 

Some highlights of Banin's research on nanocrystals include the demonstration of the artificial atom character in quantum dots (cooperation with Prof. Oded Millo, Nature 1999), the development of nanocrystals with bright emission in the near-infrared (Journal of the American Chemical Society 2000) and their incorporation in polymer-nanocrystal light emitting diodes (cooperation with Prof. Nir Tessler, Science 2002), the synthesis of III-V semiconductor colloidal quantum rods (Nature Materials 2003), and the universal role of acoustic phonons in quantum dots emission (Physical Review Letters 2009). In 2004 Banin and his co-workers reported on the selective growth of gold tips onto semiconductor nanocrystals (Science 2004, Nature Materials 2005) and in recent years he has focused his work on hybrid nanoparticles combining disparate materials. Such nanoparticles manifest unique combined and often synergetic properties originating from the unusual combination of materials, and exhibit potential for use in harvesting solar energy, optics, electro-optics and biological labeling. Banin and his team discovered a new form of hybrid nanocages (Nature Materials 2010), and developed heavily doped semiconductor nanocrystals that open a path for electronic, optoelectronic and solar cell devices based on colloidal quantum dots (Science 2011). Recently, they reported on the synthesis of nanorod couples and their unique formation mechanism via self limited self-assembly (Nature Materials 2014).