Professor Enrique Iglesia
Background
Enrique Iglesia is the Theodore Vermeulen Chair Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and a Faculty Senior Scientist in the E.O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
He received his B.S. degree summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1977 and his Ph.D. degree in 1982 from Stanford University both in Chemical Engineering. In 1993, he joined the University of California at Berkeley after eleven years of research and management experience in heterogeneous catalysis at the Corporate Research Labs of Exxon Research and Engineering. He is the Director of the Berkeley Catalysis Center, which includes eight faculty members in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering.
He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2008 and as a Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2010. He has received a Humboldt Senior Scientist Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and a Doctor Honoris Causa from the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia. During 2011, he has been recognized with the Gabor A. Somorjai Award for Creative Research in Heterogeneous Catalysis of the American Chemical Society, the Alpha Chi Sigma Award for Excellence in Chemical Engineering Research of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the Franςois Gault Lectureship Award of the European Federation of Catalysis Societies. His research has also been recognized with the George A. Olah Award in Hydrocarbon Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, the Award for Excellence in Natural Gas Conversion, the Wilhelm Manchot Chemistry Prize of the Technical University of Munich, the Richard H. Wilhelm Award in Chemical Reaction Engineering of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and the Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis of the Catalysis Society. He has also received the Robert Burwell Lectureship of the Catalysis Society and the V.N. Ipatieff Professorship at Northwestern University. He was named the Cross Canada Lecturer of the Chemical Institute of Canada in 2011 and the inaugural recipient of the Tanabe Prize in Acid-Base Catalysis in 2009.
His teaching awards include the Donald Sterling Noyce Prize, the top teaching award in the physical sciences at Berkeley, the Best Teacher Award of the College of Chemistry, and the Best Teacher Award of the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Award for Excellence in Teaching of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Professor Iglesia is the former Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Catalysis (1997-2010) and serves as President of the North American Catalysis Society. He has served as chairman of the Division of Petroleum Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, as a Director in the Division of Catalysis and Reaction Engineering in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and in the Editorial Board of several leading journals in the catalysis field.
His research interests include the synthesis and the structural and mechanistic characterization of inorganic solids useful as catalysts for chemical reactions important in energy conversion, petrochemical synthesis, and environmental control.
