Enrique Iglesia received a B.S. from Princeton University (1977, summa cum laude) and a Ph.D. from Stanford University (1982) in Chemical Engineering, with Professor Michel Boudart as his mentor and in the areas of catalysis and chemical reaction engineering. In 1993, he joined the University of California at Berkeley as Professor of Chemical Engineering, after twelve years of research and management experience at the Exxon Corporate Research Laboratories, where he ultimately led the Catalysis Research Section with stewardship responsibility for the deployment of catalytic technologies in the downstream and chemicals sectors of Exxon Corporation.
He is currently the Michel Boudart Distinguished Professor in the Davidson School of Chemical Engineering and the Presidential Fellow on Energy Transitions at Purdue University. He is also the Theodore Vermeulen Chair (emeritus) in Chemical Engineering and a Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California at Berkeley. He has held positions as Laboratory Fellow at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and as Faculty Senior Scientist at the E.O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy.
He holds doctor honoris causa degrees from the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia and the Technical University of Munich. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors, and the Real Sociedad de Ciencias Exactas (Spain). He is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), and the Royal Society of Chemistry and one of nearly 100 scientists chosen as Honorary Fellows of the Chinese Chemical Society. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Catalysis (1997-2013) and as a member and chair of committees addressing “Basic Research Needs in Energy” and “Future Directions in Chemical Engineering”, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Academies. He has served as Vice-President and President of the North American Catalysis Society and as Vice-President and President-Elect of the International Association of Catalysis Societies.
His research has been recognized with the George A. Olah Award in Hydrocarbon Chemistry, the Gabor Somorjai Award for Creative Research in Catalysis, and the E.V. Murphree Award for Industrial and Engineering Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. He has received the Richard H. Wilhelm Award in Chemical Reaction Engineering, the Alpha Chi Sigma Award for Outstanding Research in Chemical Engineering, and the William H. Walker Award for Excellence in Contributions to the Chemical Engineering Literature from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. The North American Catalysis Society has recognized the scientific achievements of his research group with the Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis, the Robert Burwell Lectureship, the Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Catalysis, and, jointly with the European Federation of Catalysis Societies, with the Michel Boudart Award for the Advancement of Catalysis. The latter society also recognized him with the Francois Gault Lectureship, the only recipient from outside Europe in its history. His conceptual and practical contributions to catalysis were noted by the Kozo Tanabe Prize in Acid-Base Catalysis, the ENI Frontiers in Energy Prize, and the Award for Excellence in Natural Gas Conversion. He was named the V.N. Ipatieff Distinguished Professorship at Northwestern University, the Neil Armstrong Distinguished Fellow at Purdue University, and the Cross Canada Lecturer by the Chemical Institute of Canada.
His teaching awards include the Donald Sterling Noyce Prize, the highest recognition in the Berkeley campus for teaching excellence in the physical sciences, as well as the Best Teacher Award of the College of Chemistry on three separate occasions and the Award for Excellence in Teaching of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He has served the National Academies as member of panels for the National Research Council and of the Peer Committee and as Chair and Vice Chair of the Nominations Committee and of the Chemical Engineering Section of NAE.
He has coauthored more than 360 publications and nearly 50 U.S patents. Professor Iglesia’s research addresses conceptual and practical challenges in catalysis and chemical reaction engineering relevant to energy conversion and use, to the synthesis of chemicals, energy carriers, and intermediates, and to the protection of the environment through kinetic, spectroscopic, isotopic and theoretical methods and the identification and synthesis of novel catalyst architectures. His research group has made pioneering advances in the design, synthesis, and structural and mechanistic characterization of inorganic solids, through the development of novel protocols for the synthesis of active nanostructures and isolated single-site catalysts within microporous and mesoporous solids, as well as through the use techniques for the elucidation of the local structure and atomic connectivity in complex solids, in most instances as the reactions of interest occur. His mechanistic inquiries into the function of active surfaces combine steady-state and transient kinetic and isotopic methods to uncover the nature and function of sites and the identity of kinetically-relevant elementary steps, with insights from and benchmarking against theoretical treatments on the complex and crowded surfaces relevant to the practice of catalysis. The impact of these fundamental insights in practice is evident from several enabling patents that cover novel catalysts and processes for conversion of natural gas, for applications of zeolite catalysis to petrochemicals synthesis and environmental control, and for the upgrading of biogenic feedstocks to energy carriers and chemical feedstocks.
370+ refereed publications; 53 Patents; 4 edited works, 54,000+ citations; h-index 129 (Google Scholar); >150 citations per article; 550 scientific presentations; 100+ keynote/plenary/named lectures.