80th Birthday Symposium of Prof. Michael Graetzel

The Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering organises the 80th Birthday Symposium for Professor Michael Graetzel.

This is a free event. Registration is required to guarantee enough seating space for everyone.

Agenda
13.30 Opening statement
13.45 Prof. Michael Graetzel
14.15 Prof. Anders Hagfeldt
14.45 Prof. James Durrant
15.15 Prof. Adélio Mendes
15.45 Break
16.15 Prof. Filippo De Angelis
16.45 Prof. Satoshi Uchida
17.15 Prof. Xiong Li

Prof. Michael Graetzel studied chemistry at the Free University of Berlin and performed his doctoral thesis work in at the Technical University Berlin under the supervision of Professor Arnim Henglein. He subsequently was a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Kerry Thomas at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana (USA). After a brief return to Berlin, during which Michael obtained his Habilitation in Physical Chemistry at the Free University under the guidance of Professor Heinz Gerischer, he moved to Lausanne Switzerland, where he joined the EPFL faculty as a professor. It was at EPFL that Prof. Michael Graetzel started his pioneering research on colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals and there use for solar energy conversion and storage which lead to several ground breaking discoveries. These generated new research fronts worldwide in the domain of photovoltaics, electrochemistry and photo-electrochemistry, addressing the urgent need to develop low-cost and efficient systems for the conversion of sunlight to electricity and chemical fuels. The large scientific and industrial impact of his studies is documented by over 50’000 publications that appeared in the photovoltaic domain alone and over 3000 patents that resulted from his invention.
Prof. Michael Graetzel is particularly well known for his discovery of mesoscopic dye-sensitized solar cells (named after him “Graetzel cells”), which in turn engendered the advent of perovskite photovoltaics, constituting the most exciting breakthrough in the recent history of photovoltaics. He used his revolutionary concept of three-dimensional junctions of nanocrystals also to realize photo-electrochemical devices for the solar generation of hydrogen and reduction of carbon dioxide as well as for the storage of electricity in lithium-ion insertion batteries.
 
Recent Awards and Honors
Prof. Michael Graetzel received numerous prestigious awards for his scientific achievements. The most recent ones include: The Al Attiyah Foundation Award forLifetime Achievements in Renewable Energy,.the Rank Prize in Optoelectronics. BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Science, Marcel Benoist Prize, August Wilhelm von Hofmann Memorial Medal of the German Chemical Society, Global Energy Prize, Zewail Prize and Medal in Molecular Science, Leonardo da Vinci Medal of the European Academy of Science, Paracelsus Prize of the Swiss Chemical Society, King Faisal International Science Prize, Samson Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation in Alternative Fuels (Israel), First Leigh-Ann Conn Prize in Renewable Energy, University of Kentucky (USA). Albert Einstein World Award of Science, Millennium Technology Prize and the Balzan Prize. He also received honorary doctor’s degrees from 14 European and Asian Universities.
Prof. Michael Graetzel is an elected member of the Swiss Academy of Technical Sciences, the German Academy of Science (Leopoldina), as well as a foreign member of the Royal Society, the Chinese Academy of Science and the Royal Spanish Academy of Engineering, and several other learned societies. He is also an Honorary member of the European Academy of Science, the Société Vaudoise de Sciences Naturelles and the Israel Chemical Society. A recent bibliometric ranking by Stanford University places Michael first amongst 100’000 world-wide leading scientists across all fields of science. According to the Web of Science (2023), he is currently the most cited chemist in the world.