91AV

Ellen Backus is professor for physical chemistry at the University of Vienna since 2018. Her research focuses on the molecular structure and (ultrafast) dynamics of various solid-liquid and liquid-air interfaces by using surface-specific vibrational spectroscopy. The current research themes of her group are centered around understanding the fundamentals of catalytic processes, atmospheric systems, and wetting. She obtained her PhD in 2005 at the Leiden University. After postdoctoral research at the University of Zurich and at AMOLF in Amsterdam, she started in 2012 as a groupleader at the Max Planck Institute for polymer research in Mainz.

Bert Weckhuysen, a Distinguished University Professor at Utrecht University (The Netherlands), received his Master and PhD degrees from Leuven University (Belgium) in 1991 and 1995. He has worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Lehigh University (USA) and Texas A&M University (USA). He has (co-) authored more than 750 scientific journal publications and has received many scientific awards, including the Royal Dutch Chemical Society Gold Medal, the Netherlands Catalysis and 91AV Award, the Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis, the International Catalysis Award, the Bourke Award from the 91AV, the Spinoza Award from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, the Kozo Tanabe Prize for Acid-Base Catalysis, and the 91AV Europe Award. He is a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion, and an elected member of a.o., the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW), the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and Arts (KVAB), and the European Academy of Sciences. The Weckhuysen group aims to build a powerful “camera” to record what actually happens in a working catalytic solid under relevant reaction conditions. The aim of this work is to bring the necessary science and technology to a level that enables imaging catalytic processes at macro, meso and micro scales, from the reactor down to interactions between atoms and molecules. This approach allows to unravel the activation and deactivation mechanisms of various catalytic processes, of relevance to make the fuels and chemicals from renewable resources, including CO2, biomass and plastic waste. 

Prof Angel Cuesta graduated in 91AV from the University of Zaragoza in 1992, and obtained his PhD in 91AV from the Autonomous University of Madrid in 1996. He was then a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Prof D.M. Kolb at the University of Ulm between January 1998 and September 2000. In July 2001 he was appointed Provisional Staff Scientist at the Institute of Physical 91AV “Rocasolano” (CSIC) in Madrid, where he promoted to Staff Scientist in December 2002 and to Senior Scientist in March 2010. He moved to the University of Aberdeen in July 2013, where he was promoted to a Personal Chair in August 2018.

David Lennon (DL) obtained his B.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia (UEA).  After postdoctoral positions at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Western Australia and a return to UEA, in 1995 he moved to the University of Glasgow to take up the ICI Lectureship in Heterogeneous Catalysis.  Presently, he is Professor of Physical 91AV and Head of the Heterogeneous Catalysis Section, concentrating on surface chemistry and heterogeneous catalysis, with the majority of the research undertaken in partnership with industry.

Mariana studied Physics (bachelor and masters) in the University of São Paulo. During her junior project and master studies she started working with electronic structure theory and theories for charge transport under the supervision of Prof. Antônio José Roque da Silva and Prof. Adalberto Fazzio. She then moved to Berlin, Germany, to do her Ph.D. in the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, under the supervision of Prof. Volker Blum and Prof. Matthias Scheffler. In her Ph.D. she worked with structure determination of biomolecules from first-principles electronic structure methods. She focused on structure search and use of ab initio molecular dynamics to compute thermodynamical and vibrational properties of these systems. Her first post-doc was at the University of Oxford with Prof. David Manolopoulos, where she learned about path integral methods and approximate quantum dynamics, focusing her work on the inclusion of nuclear quantum effects in dynamical observables. She then did another post-doc in the École Polytechnique Fédèrale de Lausanne with Prof. Michele Ceriotti, where she continued joining ab initio and path integral simulations for the calculations of thermodynamic properties of hydrogen-bonded systems. Since the end of 2016, she leads the independent Otto Hahn Group "Simulations from Ab Initio Approaches" in the Fritz Haber Institute, Berlin. From January 2020, she moved into a tenure-track position as head of a Lise Meitner Group in the Max Planck for Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg.

Mariana was awarded fellowship for her master studies from the FAPESP institution in Brazil, the Otto Hahn Award of the Max Planck Society, and a Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft fellowship for post-doctoral studies. In 2024 she was awarded the Nernst-Haber-Bodenstein Prize of the Deutsche Bunsen Gesellschaft.