Professor Michael Grätzel is supervising the EPFL team for conducting high-quality  scientific research and pursuing technology breakthroughs.

Professor Michael Grätzel is a Swiss citizen of German origin. He studied Chemistry at the Free University of Berlin and received a doctoral degree in natural science (Dr. rer. nat.) from the Technical University Berlin in 1971. From 1972 - 1974 he was a postdoctoral fellow of the Petroleum Research Foundation in Notre Dame Indiana USA. He returned to Berlin where he received his habilitation and venia legendi in 1976. Professor of Physical Chemistry at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) since 1977 he directs there the Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces, conducting research in the field of artificial photosynthesis to generate electricity and fuels from sunlight. His recent awards include the King Faisal International Science Prize, the Samson Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation in Alternative Fuels, the Benoist Prize, the Swiss Electric Research Award, the Albert Einstein World Award of Science, the Paul Karrer Gold Medal, the Gutenberg Research Award, as well as the 2010 Millenium Technology Grand Prize, and the 2009 Balzan Prize. He holds ten honorary doctor’s degrees from European and Asian Universities and has frequently been an invited professor at foreign academic institutions including the University of California at Berkeley, Cornell University the NUS and NTU in Singapore, the King Abdullaziz University in Jeddah Saudi Arabia and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Cachan (France). 

He also was the 2012 Albert Einstein Professor of the Chinese Academy of Science. He has published over 1500 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals of high international standing including Nature and Science that have been cited over 230’000 times according to the ISI Web of Science. His current h-factor is 220. He is a member of the German Academy of Science, a Fellow of the European Academy of Science, the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) and a Max Planck Fellow. He is also a member of the Swiss Chemical Society and an Honorary member of the Bulgarian Academy of Science as well as the Société Vaudoise de Sciences Naturelles. Grätzel’s 1645 publications have received some 284’000 citations and his h-index is 243 (Web of Science, September 2019). A recent ranking issued by Stanford University places Grätzel in the first position on a list of 100,000 top scientists across all fields.

At 112CO2, Professor Michael Grätzel is supervising the EPFL team for conducting high-quality scientific research and pursuing technology breakthroughs.