Serge Lemay is professor of Iontronics at the Huygens-Kamerlingh Onnes laboratory, Leiden Institute of Physics. He came to Leiden University in early 2026, where he intends to concentrate on the physics of mixed electronic-ionic charge transport. These processes are at the heart of many of the technologies underpinning the ongoing electrification of society, including batteries, supercapacitors and a wide range of complex electrocatalysts. His favoured experimental tools include microfabricated nanodevices and sensitive electronics.

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Lemay studied electrical engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada, followed by a Ph.D. in experimental solid-state physics at Cornell University, USA. His thesis focused on electronic transport and synchrotron measurements on charge-density-wave materials.

He came to the Netherlands in 1999 as a postdoc at Delft University of Technology, where he performed scanning tunnelling microscopy experiments on quantum effects in carbon nanotubes. He joined the molecular biophysics group at Delft as faculty in 2001, and initiated research on ion electrostatics, DNA physics, and single-entity electrochemistry.

In 2009 he relocated to the University of Twente, The Netherlands, to found a new chair in nanoionics (later bioelectronics) at the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology. Here his research focused on electrochemical nanofluidic devices and proof-of-concept applications in biosensing.

He joined the Huygens-Kamerlingh Onnes laboratory, Leiden Institute of Physics, Leiden University in March 2026. Here he intends to concentrate on iontronics, the physics of mixed ionic-electronic charge transport.