Professor Pavel Matousek

Pavel Matousek obtained his MSc and PhD degrees in physics from the Czech Technical University (Prague), the latter carried out at the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL, Oxfordshire). Since 1991 he has worked at RAL where he proposed the use of Optical Parametric Chirped-Pulse Amplification (OPCPA) for the generation of extreme, multi-PW laser peak powers, pioneered ps-Kerr gating for fluorescence rejection in Raman spectroscopy, proposed Spatially Offset Raman Spectroscopy (SORS) and introduced Transmission Raman Spectroscopy (TRS) into pharmaceutical analysis. Pavel’s current research areas include non-invasive disease diagnosis, security screening, forensics, cultural heritage and pharmaceutical analysis.

Pavel has published over 250 peer-reviewed articles, h-index: 60(WoS)/70(Google) and holds 13 patent families (9 granted, 4 pending). He received the premier Royal Academy of Engineering’s (RAEng) 2014 MacRobert Award (UK), the 2009 Charles Mann Award (FACSS, USA) and the 2020 & 2006 & 2002 Meggers Awards from the Society for Applied Spectroscopy (SAS, USA). He is an Associate Editor of Applied Spectroscopy and previously served on the editorial board of Analyst. He was also the Conference Program Chair of SciX 2011 (Reno, NV).

In 2008, through STFC, Pavel co-founded Cobalt Light Systems Ltd and was its Board Director and the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) throughout its existence. The company developed SORS/TRS scanners deployed at over 75 airports and 30 pharmaceutical companies worldwide. In 2017, Cobalt was acquired by Agilent for £40M. Agilent has recently formed its global ‘Laser Spectroscopy Center of Excellence’ in Oxford area, next to RAL.

Pavel is a Fellow of RAEng, RSC and SAS, an Honorary Professor at University College London, Honorary Visiting Research Fellow at University of Oxford and a Senior Fellow of STFC at RAL (the main position).