He undertook his DPhil in Condensed Matter Physics at St John’s College at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Robin Nicholas and Michael Johnston.

He then undertook two further years of optoelectronics research with Vladimir Bulovic as a Marie Curie Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This research focused on demonstrating long charge carrier transport lengths in halide perovskites,[7] enabling planar heterojunction solar cell device architectures, and developing recombination models.

[15] In 2021, Stranks received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Stuart R. Wenham Young Professional award.

[16] He was also awarded the Phillip Leverhulme Prize in Physics [17] and received the 2021 Royal Society of Chemistry Energy and Environmental Science Lectureship for his “contributions to the field of halide perovskite optoelectronics, including understanding carrier recombination, complex structure-function relationships and device performance”[18] In 2022, he was awarded the Stanisław Lem European Research Prize.