The Division Transversale Energie de la Société Chimique de France (SCF) (Transversal Energy Division of the Société Chimique de France) has awarded its Junior Researcher Prize to Nicolas Kaeffer,
Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion (MPI-CEC, Mülheim/Ruhr, Germany).
This distinction rewards Nicolas Kaeffer's work in the field of molecular catalysis applied to the conversion of solar energy into chemical energy, in order to produce green dihydrogen and also to allow the transformation of CO2 into products of high added value, in the perspective of a circular economy of CO2.
After a PhD performed from 2012 to 2016 at the Chemistry and Biology of Metals laboratory (LCBM, Grenoble, France) on the integration of molecular catalysts in (photo)cathodes for dihydrogen release, work rewarded by a 2017 thesis award from the University of Grenoble Alpes, Nicolas Kaeffer completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH, Switzerland) where he developed and studied active surfaces with highly controlled compositions and structures for the electroreduction of CO2, as well as for the electrocatalytic oxidation of water. He is Group Leader in organometallic electrocatalysis at MPI-CEC since 2020.