Dr Rudolf studied Physics at the University 'La Sapienza' of Rome, Italy, specializing in Solid State Physics. In 1987 she joined the National Surface Science laboratory in Trieste for 5 years, interrupted by 2 extended periods at Bell Labs, USA, where she worked on the newly discovered fullerenes. In 1993 she moved to the University of Namur, Belgium, where she received her PhD and quickly progressed to lecturer and senior lecturer before taking up the Chair in Experimental Solid State Physics at the University in Groningen, The Netherlands, in 2003 and become head of the "Surfaces and Thin Films" group of the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials. 2014-2018 she was also the director of the Graduate School of Science and Engineering of the University of Groningen. Currently she is Dean of Graduate Studies for the University of Groningen. Her main research interests concern molecular motors and switches, graphene and other 2D solids, organic thin films and inorganic-organic hybrids. She has published >280 articles and given >200 invited talks at (inter)national conferences and research institutions worldwide. Prof. Rudolf advised 23 postdoctoral researchers; 31 PhD students completed their dissertation under her guidance so far, 10 PhD students are currently supervised by her. She also guided 17 BSc and 34 MSc students.
She was the President of the European Physical Society (2019-21) and of the Belgian Physical Society (2000-01). Dr Rudolf was elected Fellow of the U.K. Institute of Physics (2001), Fellow of the American Physical Society (2010),  Member of Merit of the Dutch Physical Society (2006) and of the Italian Physical Society (2018) and member of the Academia Europaea (2021), the German Academy of Science and Engineering (2016) as well as foreign corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna (2020). Her work on molecular motors earned the 2007 Descartes Prize of the European Commission. In 2013 she was appointed Officer of the Order of Orange Nassau by H.M. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

1)   Antonios Kouloumpis, Eleni Thomou, Nikolaos Chalmpes, Konstantinos Dimos, Konstantinos Spyrou, Athanasios Bourlinos, Ioannis Koutselas, Dimitrios Gournis, Petra Rudolf (2017) "Graphene/Carbon-dot Hybrid Thin Films Prepared by a Modified Langmuir-Schaefer Method" ACS Omega 2(5), 2090–2099; DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.7b00107. 38 citations

    The paper is important because it provides a simple and economic way to sandwich luminescent carbon dots (C-dots) between oxidized graphene sheets in order to form novel hybrid multilayer films. Such hybrids of different types of nanometer-sized carbon have great potential as active materials in applications such as gas storage, gas/liquid separation, photocatalysis, bioimaging, optoelectronics, and nanosensing.

2)    Ali Syari’ati, Sumit Kumar, Amara Zahid, Abdurrahman Ali El Yumin, Jianting Ye, Petra Rudolf (2019) "Photoemission Spectroscopy Study of Structural Defects in Molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) Grown by Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD)", Chemical Communications 55, 10384 - 10387; DOI : 10.1039/C9CC01577A. 69 citations

   Transition metal dichalcogenides are an emerging class of materials for applications in advanced electronics, spintronics, optoelectronics, energy harvesting, flexible electronics, DNA sequencing and personalized medicine. When produced by chemical vapour deposition, they always contain structural defects, which negatively influence their performance. This paper is important because it reveals the fingerprint of such defects in MoS₂ by means of X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy and illustrates how these defects can be partially healed by grafting thiol-functionalized molecules.

3)    Theodosis Giousis, Georgia Potsi, Antonios Kouloumpis, Konstantinos Spyrou, Yiannis Georgantas, Nikolaos Chalmpes, Konstantinos Dimos, Myrsini-Kiriaki Antoniou, Georgios Papavassiliou, Athanasios B. Bourlinos, Hae Jin Kim, Vijay Kumar Shankarayya Wadi, Saeed Alhassan, Majid Ahmadi, Bart J. Kooi, Graeme Blake, Daniel M. Balazs, Maria A. Loi, Dimitrios Gournis, and Petra Rudolf (2021) "Synthesis of 2D germanane (GeH): a new, fast and facile approach", Angewandte Chemie Int. Ed., 60(1), 360-365; DOI: 10.1002/anie.202010404 and 10.1002/ange.202010404. 16 citations

    Germanane's remarkable combination of properties makes it an extremely suitable candidate as 2D material for field effect devices, photovoltaics, bactericidal coatings and photocatalysis. However, up to the publication of this paper progress was hampered by the fact that the synthesis is generally slow (6 to 14 days). The new and facile protocol presented in this paper allows to synthesize Germanane at room temperature in a significantly shorter time (a few minutes), which renders this method highly attractive for technological applications.