Award of the Société Chimique de France

Prof. Leitner awarded German-French Research Prize

 

Prof. Walter Leitner, Director at the Max-Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion and holder of the RWTH Chair for Technical Chemistry and Petroleum Chemistry, is awarded the German-French "Georg Wittig-Victor Grignard" prize by the Société Chimique de France (SCF).

The prize is awarded annually to excellent chemists who contribute to the elaboration of chemistry in both countries and thus promote the internationalization of this discipline. The award ceremony will take place in early 2021 by the SCF together with the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh).

Leitner and his team receive the award for their work in the field of homogeneous catalysis in supercritical CO2 (scCO2) and their research in the field of chemical conversion and use of biomass. It is also honored that Leitner is strongly committed to international scientific cooperation and networking with French chemists.

Leitner is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion since October 2017 and holds the Chair for Technical Chemistry and Petroleum Chemistry at RWTH Aachen University since 2002. He is particularly concerned with the use of carbon dioxide as a raw material in the fields of energy and chemistry. For the conversion of CO2, his team researches catalytic processes from the molecular basics to reaction engineering concepts. For his contributions in this area, he was among the finalists for the German Future Prize 2019 together with industrial colleagues from Covestro.