Serena Corr is a chair in Functional Materials and Professor in Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Sheffield. She works on next-generation battery materials and advanced characterisation techniques for nanomaterials.

Corr grew up in Clonmel and attended Presentation Secondary School. She studied chemistry at Trinity College Dublin.^[1] She completed her doctoral work on magnetic structured materials (nanoparticles and quantum dots for biomedical applications) with Yurii Gun'ko.^[2] She focussed on nanomaterials that could be used for biomedical applications.^[3] Corr worked on several outreach programs during her PhD. She joined the University of California, Santa Barbara, working with Ram Seshadri on vanadate metal-insulator transitions from 2007 to 2009.^[1][4] She worked on rutile vanadium oxide.^[4][5] They also explored molybdenum dioxide materials that demonstrated reversible lithium storage capacity.^[6]

As a student, Serena was heavily involved in the Maths Department in Trinity College Dublin, acting as a course administrator for Tim Murphy's 061 Practical Computing course^{[citation needed]}.

Corr was made a lecturer at the University of Kent.^[1] She spent her first year writing papers and proposals for the Diamond Light Source and ISIS neutron source.^[3][7] Her early work considered ways to design nanostructured materials using organometallic precursors.^[8][9] She demonstrated that magnetic nanoparticles could be used as MRI contrast agents.^[10] She held a visiting professorship at the University of Otago^{[citation needed]}.

Corr joined the University of Glasgow as a lecturer in 2013 and was made a professor in 2018.^[1] She took part in the science communication competition I'm a Scientist, Get me out of here!.^[11] In 2014 she collaborated with Eleanor Schofield to conserve the Mary Rose.^[12] She developed multi-functional magnetic nano-composites that could remove the iron ions within waterlogged wood.^[12]

In 2013 she edited a chapter for Nanomedicine, Magnetic Nanoparticles for Targeted Cancer Diagnosis and Therapy.^[13] Her group look at new insertion electrodes for energy storage.^[14] These were formed from nanoparticles, which house lithium ions that can be moved between the cathode and anode.^[15] She showed that shape and size of the nanoparticles can impact their electrochemical properties.^[15] She uses fast microwave processing and alkoxides for continuous chemical synthesis of next generation battery materials.^[15][16] In 2015 she was awarded a £1.2 million Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council grant to investigate the reliability of these materials in devices.^[17] This involves studying the structure of electrodes and dynamics of ion movement.^[18][19] In 2017 she was made a Training Champion for the Faraday Institution, an academia - industry response to the Faraday Battery Challenge.^[20][21] Her research on battery longevity and how Lithium-ion batteries degrade was covered by The Daily Telegraph.^[22] In 2019 she will talk about the history of batteries at the Royal Institution.^[23]

In 2017 Corr was selected as a Royal Society of Chemistry Journal of Materials Chemistry lecturer.^[1][24] She joined the University of Sheffield as a chair in Functional Materials and Professor in Chemical and Biological Engineering in 2018.^[25][26] She serves on the management board of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council doctoral training centre in energy storage.^[27] She is an associate editor of Royal Society of Chemistry journal Nanoscale^{[citation needed]} and the IOP Publishing journal Progress in Energy.^[28][29]