Research
Professor Kraft FREng leads the Computational Modelling Group (CoMo) at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology. His research spans the computational modelling and optimisation of particle formation processes, with particular expertise in the combustion synthesis of organic and inorganic nanoparticles. Drawing on stochastic and deterministic methods, the group develops detailed mechanistic models that capture the complex physical and chemical processes governing particle nucleation, growth, and aggregation. This work has yielded significant advances in the understanding of soot formation, titania synthesis, and silicon nanoparticle production, with applications across the automotive, power, and chemical industries.
A more recent and growing focus of the group is The World Avatar, an ambitious project to build a universal knowledge graph underpinned by semantic AI and linked data technologies. The goal is to enable seamless interoperability across heterogeneous systems, datasets, and domains, connecting models, data sources, and agents in a common machine readable framework. Applications span a remarkable range of scales and contexts: from materials discovery and laboratory automation, through the modelling of built environments and urban digital twins, to public health, policy analysis and decision support for complex societal challenges. The World Avatar represents a broader shift in the group's work towards knowledge engineering and the digitalisation of science and engineering at scale.
Biography
Professor Markus Kraft FREng is a Professorial Fellow of Churchill College and Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge. He holds a Diplom in Technomathematik from the University of Kaiserslautern (1992) and a doctorate in Technical Chemistry from the same institution (1997), and was awarded a ScD by Cambridge in 2012.
From 2013 to 2025 he served as the founding Director of the Singapore-Cambridge CARES Research Centre.
Professor Kraft is also co-founder and director of Computational Modelling Cambridge Limited (CMCL), a technology company specialising in semantic AI, interoperability, and digitalisation, and of its German subsidiary, Computational Modelling Pirmasens GmbH (CMPG)."
Professional recognition:
Dipl.-Math. techn., Dr. rer. nat., MA, ScD, FREng, FIChemE, VDI, FCI
IChemE Geldart Medal, 2026
FREng, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, 2024.
IChemE Global Award 2023 finalist for the category “Pharma”. Project name: “Digital Lab Framework - The World Avatar.”
Ricardo Award, Institute of Physics, 2023
Distinguished Paper Prize, Combustion Institute, 2022
Fellow of the Combustion Institute, 2020
Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, elected 2021
Gaydon Prize, Combustion Institute (BS), 2018
Fellow of IChemE, 2018
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel-Forschungspreis, 2016
DFG Mercator Fellow, 2012
Ricardo Award, Institute of Physics, 2009
Gaydon Prize, Combustion Institute (BS), 2006
Beilby Medal, RSC, 2006
Royal Academy of Engineering - Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship, 2005
Sugden Award, Combustion Institute (BS), 2004
