Keynote speakers

We are happy to announce confirmed keynote speakers for EuropaCat 2025:

The keynote speakers

Miao Sun

Research Science Specialist and Project Team leader at Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia
Recipient of EFCATS Applied Catalysis Award 2025

Portrait of a woman

She is renowned for her exceptional ability to translate innovative scientific ideas into impactful industrial applications. In Saudi Aramco, she leads ground-breaking research on the catalytic upgrading of low-value feedstocks, including heavy and waste oils, into valuable petrochemicals—advancing technologies that are both cost-effective and environmentally sustainable. Her work not only addresses urgent global energy and environmental challenges but also sets a high standard for applied catalysis in the oil and gas industry.

Title of lecture: TBA

Gerhard Mestl

Head of Department Oxidation Catalysis, Clariant AG, Germany

He has extensive experience as a researcher and manager at several German catalyst manufacturers, and for the last 13 years with Clariant. In 2017, Gerhard Mestl received the EFCATS Catalysis Award, and he was being specifically recognized for his seminal achievements in the field of selective oxidation.

Title of lecture:“Vision without Execution is Hallucination” (T.A. Edison) Effective Strategies for Scale-Up of Heterogenous Catalysts

Albin Pintar

Research professor and Head of the programme group »Integrated Approach to Water Pollution Prevention« at the National Institute of Chemistry, Ljubljana, Slovenia

His research interests include heterogeneous catalysis, environmental catalysis, kinetics and mechanisms of catalytic reactions in multiphase reactors, wastewater treatment, and the production of hydrogen-rich mixtures from renewables and process intensification.

Title of lecture: Harnessing light for a cleaner future: Advances in heterogeneous photocatalysis

Ning Yan

Professor and director at Centre for Hydrogen Innovations, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Portrait of a man His research focuses on catalyst design, green energy as CO₂ conversion and ammonia decomposition, as well as waste refinery and utilization, and preparation of renewable nitrogen-containing compounds.

Title of lecture: TBA

Jacinto Sá

Professor at Uppsala University, Sweden

a man

His research group focuses on the development of heterogeneous photo-electro-catalysis based on plasmonics. Building on advanced ultrafast characterization methods, the group is developing unique systems for applications ranging from artificial photosynthesis to photoredox catalysis.

Title of lecture: Plasmons: From metal ore to catalyst

Anna Chrobok

Professor at Silesian University of Technology, Poland

a woman

Her research group focuses on the development of sustainable processes for fine chemicals production; designing of heterogeneous and homogeneous (bio)catalysts; the design, characterization and application of functional ionic liquids for green synthesis.

Title of lecture: A generic approach to tailoring catalysts for industrially-relevant reactions: From acidic to enzymatic catalysis

Tapio Salmi

Professor at Åbo Akademi, Finland

His research theme concerns the development of wood-derived raw materials to replace oil-based fuels. His research questions focus on the modelling and optimisation of chemical reactions, in particular catalytic reactions.

Title of lecture: The impact of chemical reaction engineering on the catalytic transformation of biomass to valuable chemicals

The keynote speakers 2

Gianvito Vilé

Associate Professor of Chemical Processes at Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Recipient of EFCATS Young Researcher Award 2025

He leads a research group focused on catalysis and process engineering for sustainable chemical manufacturing. His research integrates atomically precise catalytic materials, continuous-flow reactor technologies, and automation to develop high-performance, scalable, and sustainable reaction platforms, with particular emphasis on pharmaceutical applications.

Title of lecture: TBA

Todd Hyster

Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University, USA

Portrait photo of a man His group is broadly focused on developing strategies that enable enzymes to catalyze reactions that are currently unknown in nature. Using the tools of directed evolution, these catalysts can be optimized to solve long-standing reactivity and selectivity challenges in chemical synthesis. A central aim of their work is to establish visible light irradiation as a general strategy for enabling enzymes to catalyze synthetically valuable free radical reactions.

Title of lecture: TBA

Xiulian Pan

Professor of the State Key Laboratory of Catalysis at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

portrait of a woman Her research interests includes synthesis and functionalization of nano-structured carbon, development of carbon-based metal-free catalysts, catalysis fundamentals over metal/carbon composites, particularly the confinement effects within limited space, as well as activation and conversion of small molecules such as CO, CO₂ and N₂

Title of lecture: TBA

Thomas Schaub

Designated Senior Principal Scientist and Lab Head of Catalysis Research Laboratory, BASF Germany, and Honorary Professor at University of St. Andrews, Scotland

Portrait of a man His research interests are within process development using homogeneous catalysis on hydrogenations, aminations, acceptorless dehydrogenations, oligomerisations, carbonylations; use of CO₂ as building block; efficient use of renewables as building blocks in organic synthesis; ChemCycling; organometallic synthesis; mechanistic investigations on homogeneous catalyzed reactions, and high pressure chemistry.

Title of lecture: Collaborative Industrial-Academic Research for the use of Homogenous Catalysis in circular processing and the utilization of renewable feedstocks

Alessandra Beretta

Professor at Politecnico di Milano, Italy

a woman

Her research deals with the study of catalytic processes in the fields of energy conversion and environmental protection, with focus on kinetics and reactor design. The research topics include the production of H₂ and syngas by CPO, SR, cracking of fossil and renewable fuels and H-carriers, the electrification of catalytic processes, the thermochemical conversion of biomass, the Selective Catalytic Reduction of NO_X by NH₃.

Title of lecture: R&D steps towards H₂ production by methane pyrolysis on Fe-Al₂O₃: From catalyst formulation to kinetic and reactor studies

Edd Anders Blekkan

Professor and head of the Catalysis group at The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway

a man

His research covers many aspects of heterogeneous catalysis and related technologies applied to energy conversion e.g. gas cleaning, natural gas conversion, as well as biomass and CO₂ conversion.

Title of lecture: TBA

Jakob Kibsgaard

Professor and head of section for Surface Physics and Catalysis at DTU, Denmark

His research focuses on developing and understanding catalysts for transforming sustainable energy into fuels and chemicals. He is using electron microscopy to correlate the atomic structure of a nanoparticle with its catalytic properties and aims at accelerating the development of scalable Power-to-X materials.

Title of lecture: Designing and investigating catalysts for energy conversion catalysts using mass-selected nanoparticles.

Keynote speakers - EuropaCat2025