Alexey Sokol

Alexey A. Sokol / Alexei Sokol / Aleksejs Sokols / Алексей Абрамович Сокол

Principal research fellow, Chemistry, UCL, London.

Theoretical physicist working on chemically relevant problems in solid state physics and materials science including: point defects and origins of Lewis acidity of zeolites; fluoride incorporation in zeolites; development and applications of hybrid QM/MM embedding approaches to heterogeneous catalysis; and defect related phenomena in bulk, surfaces, interfaces and nanoparticles of insulating and semiconducting materials as well as photo-stimulated processes in low-dimensional nanostructured materials. His recent studies focused on simulations of systems with structural disorder using stochastic methods and solid state phase transitions.

He was born in Riga, Latvia, Soviet Union, 5 March 1964; Latvian; in 1986 graduated from the Stučka Latvian State University, Department of Physics and Mathematics, specialising in Theoretical Physics (supervised by Drs V. A. Ivin, B. P. Zapol and Yu. N. Shunin) and obtained his professional qualification in physics and teaching; worked in Riga Radioisotope Devices Research Institute (1986-1992) as an engineer, a junior research associate and then a research associate in the Mathematical Modelling Group with Dr A. I. Krupman; Riga Aviation Institute with Prof. Yu. N. Shunin (Latvian Aviation Academy - 1992-1993) as a laboratory technician and lecturer at the Department of Physics. In 1993 he moved to UK, obtained his PhD in Physical Chemistry from UCL whilst based at the Royal Institution of Great Britain under supervision of Prof. C. R. A. Catlow, with the support of the Dow Chemical Company, and in particular Dr J. M. Garces. In 1997 he continued as research associate at the Royal Institution with Prof. Richard Catlow within Davy Faraday Research Laboratory (DFRL). In 2007 members of DFRL moved to the Department of Chemistry, UCL. In 2017 he has been promoted to principal research fellow.