Photo by N. Delves-Broughton, University of Bath Photographer is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

In this series, Humanists UK Chief Executive Andrew Copson hosts unscripted, one-on-one discussions over the course of 60 minutes with philosophers, scientists, campaigners, entertainers, and historians.

Saiful presented the 80th anniversary Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 2016 for BBC TV on the theme of energy; the lectures were entitled Supercharged: Fuelling the Future and achieved over 3.5 million interactions through the BBC broadcasts and social media.

He has served on the Diversity Committee of the Royal Society, and was selected for the Royal Society’s ‘Inspiring Scientists’ project that recorded the life stories of ten British scientists with minority ethnic heritage in partnership with National Life Stories at the British Library.

In an interview in the Guardian in 2016 he said:

I think science is beautiful and you can actually find out more about the mysteries of the world through rational investigation and through reasoned thought and observation… my name obviously comes from my parents and that illustrates where a lot of religion comes from. Most people are the religion of their parents, and they are the religion of their grandparents… so it is passed down by authority and parents.

Saiful Islam joined the University of Oxford Department of Materials as Statutory Chair in Materials Modelling in January 2022, after moving from the University of Bath. He grew up in Crouch End, London and obtained his Chemistry degree and PhD (1988) from University College London (with Richard Catlow FRS), followed by a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Eastman Kodak Labs, New York, USA. He returned to the UK to the University of Surrey, and was then appointed Professor of Materials Chemistry at the University of Bath in 2006, before joining Oxford in 2022. He is also Professorial Fellow at St Anne's College Oxford. He currently serves on the RSC Board of Trustees and is a patron of Humanists UK.