2024 Catalysis Science & Technology symposium

Jordi gained his undergraduate degree in Chemistry at the University of Barcelona in 2003. He then pursued his studies for a MRes and PhD with a FPU studentship in the group of Prof. Jaume Vilarrasa. In 2010, he received a postdoctoral fellowship to join the group of Prof. Donna Blackmond at The Scripps Research Institute in California. Three years later, he took up a position in the Chemistry Department at Imperial College London as an IC Junior Research Fellow. In 2016, he was appointed as Lecturer at The University of Manchester, where he climbed the academic ladder, eventually becoming Full Professor in 2023. His current research lines reflect his academic journey, with the development of better synthetic methods guided by reaction mechanistic information.

In 2018, Jordi was honored with the Thieme Chemistry Journals Award. The following year, he received the Young Researcher Award from the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (RSEQ), and in 2020, he was the recipient of the Hickinbottom Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC).

Shaojun Guo is a Boya Distinguished Professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Peking University, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He is renowned for his leadership in nano/sub-nano/atomic materials for catalysis and energy applications. He has made outstanding contributions to the interdisciplinary fields of materials chemistry for energy electrocatalysis. He is one of the Highly Cited Researchers (Chemistry, Materials) from 2014 to 2022, and World's Top 2% Scientist (Stanford University). He has been honored with numerous awards, including Xplorer Prize, National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars and the China Youth Science and Technology Prize. Professor Guo is a Catalysis Science & Technology Associate Editor.

Mélanie Hall, in Brest (France), obtained her Master's degree in Chemistry from the National Graduate School of Chemistry (ENSCR) in Rennes, France, and received her PhD degree (2007) in Chemistry from the University of Graz, Austria, under the supervision of Prof. Kurt Faber. After conducting postdoctoral research with Prof. Andy Bommarius at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, USA, she returned to the University of Graz as a University Assistant (2010). She obtained her Habilitation in Organic Chemistry in 2016 and is currently an assistant professor of sustainable bio-organic synthetic chemistry. Her research focuses on the development of enzymatic strategies for organic synthesis, with a strong focus on asymmetric biocatalysis and sustainability. Professor Hall is a Catalysis Science & Technology Associate Editor.

Núria López graduated in Chemistry (1999) and got her Ph.D. degree in Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Barcelona, Spain (1995). As a postdoctoral researcher, she joined the Center for Atomic-scale Materials Physics led by Prof. Jens K. Nørskov (Denmark). In 2005 she started her independent career at ICIQ. Her research group focuses on the theoretical research in heterogeneous photo-electro-catalysis.

Professor López has co-authored over 200 scientific publications. In 2010 she was awarded an ERC Starting Grant (2010) and then an ERC Proof-of-concept (2015) by the European Research Council. She was awarded a “Prize for Excellence” by the Real Sociedad Española de Química in 2015. She has collaborated with several industries in Europe to leverage atomistic modelling, participated in 9 EU projects and served in several committees in the European Union, including the most important supercomputing initiatives in Europe (where she was Chair of PRACE‘s Scientific Steering Committee). Professor López is a Catalysis Science & Technology Associate Editor.

Will Medlin received his Bachelors in chemical engineering from Clemson University in 1996 and his PhD from the University of Delaware in 2001. After conducting postdoctoral research at Sandia National Laboratories, he joined the chemical and biological engineering department at the University of Colorado, where he is currently the Denver Business Challenge Endowed Professor.

His research interests are in the area of heterogeneous catalysis and surface science, with particular emphases on investigations of catalytic chemistry on well-defined surfaces, and on controlling the near-surface environment of heterogeneous catalysts with organic monolayers and thin films. Professor Medlin is a Catalysis Science & Technology Associate Editor.

Dr David Nelson studied chemistry at the Universities of Edinburgh (MChem, 2008) and Strathclyde (PhD, 2012, with Prof. J. M. Percy). He was then a Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews (2012-14, with Prof. S. P. Nolan) before taking up a Chancellor’s Fellowship at the University of Strathclyde (2014), where he was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2018. He received a Bürgenstock Junior Scientists Programme Fellowship in 2019, a Thieme Chemistry Journals Award in 2020 and the Royal Society of Chemistry Inorganic Reaction Mechanisms Early Career Award in 2021. David joined the editorial board of Communications Chemistry in 2020. David and his team use tools and techniques from physical (in)organic, organometallic, organic, and computational chemistry to understand reaction mechanisms and structure/reactivity relationships in homogeneous catalysis mediated by transition metal complexes. Current areas of focus include nickel-catalysed cross-coupling reactions and iridium-catalysed C-H activation reactions.

Motiar completed his PhD in Chemistry and Molecular Sciences in 2018 at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University Bern (Switzerland) under a Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship. He received a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Postdoc Mobility Fellowship in 2019 and joined Professor Erwin Reisner’s group at the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge. In 2020, he was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual European Fellowship and currently, he is working in the Reisner Lab as a Senior Research Associate. In 2021, Motiar joined St John’s College as a research fellow and was appointed as a NanoDTC teaching associate at the Department of Physics, University of Cambridge. His current research interests include electrocatalytic and sunlight-driven conversion of carbon dioxide and other waste streams such as plastics and biomass into renewable fuels and commodity chemicals, aiming to attain a sustainable circular economy.  

Ken-ichi Shimizu has been a full Professor at Institute for Catalysis, Hokkaido University, since 2015. He received his Ph.D. degree at Nagoya University in 2000. He began his career as a Research Associate at Niigata University in 2000, moved to Nagoya University in 2004 as an Assistant Professor, and then moved to Hokkaido University in 2010 as an Associate Professor. His main interest is in heterogeneous catalysis for sustainable chemical transformations and automotive emission control. He also works for in situ spectroscopies and catalysis informatics for molecular level design of heterogeneous catalysis. Professor Shimizu is a Catalysis Science & Technology Associate Editor.

Magda Titirici, FRSC, is a Chair in Sustainable Energy Materials at Imperial College London in the Department of Chemical Engineering. She studied Chemistry at the University of Bucharest and received her PhD from TU Dortmund. She was a postdoc at the Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces where she also become an independent group leader for 5 years.

Prior to Imperial, Magda worked at the School of Engineering and Materials Science at the Queen Mary University of London as a Reader and after Professor. Her research interests are the design and fundamental understanding of sustainable materials for energy storage and conversion technologies including batteries beyond Li-ion, sustainable chemicals from biomass electrolysis as well as the development of sustainable, critical metal-free electrocatalysts for Oxygen and CO2 reduction. She is a Highly Cited Researcher in the field of materials chemistry and her work has been recognized by several awards such as the RSC Corday Morgan Prize, IoMM3 Rosenhain and Griffith Medal and Prize and the Royal Society Kavli Medal and Lecture. She is a Wallenberg Initiative Materials for Science and Sustainability (WISE) guest professor at Stockholm University in the Department of Materials and Environmental Chemistry and an international investigator at the Advanced Institute for Materials Research ( AIMR) Tohoku University. She is also passionate to build a more tolerant, inclusive and diverse environment in academia where everyone can thrive. Professor Titirici is an Associate Editor for RSC journal Green Chemistry.

Meera completed her undergraduate education at McMaster University in Canada, at which time she undertook a Honours thesis project with Prof. Emslie. She then attended the University of Toronto, where she completed a PhD in Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Douglas Stephan. After her PhD, she was awarded a Royal Society Newton Fellowship to pursue postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford. In 2020, Meera started her own independent research group at the University of Manchester and has very recently returned to Oxford as an Associate Professor in Inorganic Chemistry. Her research interests are in sustainable element catalysis and main group clusters. In 2024, she was awarded the UniSusCat Clara Immerwahr Award for her contributions in catalysis research.