Prof.dr. Evgeny Pidko

The ISE research program aims at resolving the mechanistic picture behind chemical processes in complex environments. It rests on a solid computational and theoretical chemistry foundation aiming at constructing a resolved molecular-level description of chemical reaction networks and identifying key parameters for their control and optimization. The key ingredient of this strategy is the transition to “operando” modeling in computational chemistry and catalysis and its integration with the experimental workflow. The grand challenge is to arrive at a general-purpose theory-guided catalyst development strategy to address key scientific challenges of the modern catalysis and materials sciences related to the needs of the society to establish a greener and more sustainable chemical industry.

Academic background

Evgeny Pidko studied chemistry at the Higher Chemical College of the Russian Academy of Science, Moscow (Russia) and obtained his PhD in computational chemistry and catalysis in 2008 with prof. dr. Rutger van Santen at Eindhoven University of Technology (The Netherlands), where in 2011-2017, he was an Assistant Professor of Catalysis for Sustainability. He joined the Chemical Engineering department of Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) as an associate professor in 2017, where in 2020 he became a full professor and chair of Inorganic Systems Engineering. He is a recipient of NWO-VENI (2010) and ERC Consolidator (2016) grants. He is a member of the advisory boards of ChemCatChem and Catal. Sci. Technol. journals, and an editorial board member of Kin. Catal. and Mend. Commun. journals. In his research, he successfully combines experiments and theory to understand molecular mechanisms underlying the behavior of various chemical systems ranging from heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysis to inorganic functional materials and use these fundamental insights to guide the development of new, more sustainable and efficient chemical technologies.