 Before moving to the University of Newcastle, he was a professor of Nanomaterials at the University of South Australia from 2015-2017. and also worked at the University of Queensland as a Professor and ARC Future Fellow from 2011-2015.He is well known in the field of mesoporous carbon nitride and was the first one to introduce porosity in carbon nitride materials which find applications in different areas of research including catalysis, energy storage and conversion and carbon dioxide capture, and photocatalytic water splitting for hydrogen generation.Ajayan Vinu was born in a small village located at the extreme South of India called Arumanai in Kanyakumari district in Tamil Nadu, India.