Professor Silvia Vignolini, University of Cambridge

Professor Vignolini’s group discovered that plants produce bright and vibrant colouration without pigments by organising cellulose into periodic nanostructures. By exploiting the same material and architecture that plants use to make colours, Prof Silvia Vignolini will develop a new generation of manufacturing processes to produce pigments using only naturally derived biomaterials. Her vision is that such bio-based pigments will replace current alternatives made with energy-intensive and problematic materials.