Adam Kirrander

Natural Sciences Fellow, SCAS.
Senior Lecturer in Chemical Physics, University of Edinburgh.
Visiting Scientist, Brown University

Adam Kirrander is an expert on the application of new light and electron sources for imaging of
atoms and molecules in real time. He has chaired several international meetings, including two
Faraday Discussions (2016/2021) and is currently editor of a special issue of Journal of Physics B.
He has contributed book chapters on topics such as quantum dynamics and ultrafast scattering, and
published more than 65 articles, including in journals such as Nature Chemistry, Nature Communica-
tions, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He was selected as a finalist in the Falling
Walls 2020 science festival, and he and his collaborators were awarded the 2021 Horizon Prize by the
Royal Society of Chemistry for their work on ultrafast scattering.

Kirrander received his first MSc degree, in Biophysics, from Uppsala University, followed by an MSc
and DPhil in Theoretical Chemistry from the University of Oxford. He was a postdoc at University
College London and a Marie Curie Individual Fellow at Laboratoire Aimé Cotton in Paris. Following
a stint at Harvard-Smithsonian/ITAMP in Boston, he moved to Edinburgh in 2012. Although primarily
a theoretician, Kirrander has a keen interest in interacting directly and proactively with experiments
and the experimental community. He has played a critical role in conceiving, carrying out, and analysing
pioneering X-ray scattering experiments. In several instances, his theoretical work has driven the develop-
ment of novel techniques and methods.

At SCAS, Kirrander will develop new ideas for future experiments that exploit the unique properties of
X-ray free-electron lasers to provide measurements of atoms and molecules in unprecedented detail.

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2021-22.