International Expert Council (Jury) Archive - Palladium Global Science Award

Prof. Francis Verpoort

Chair of the International Expert Council (Jury)

Chair Professor, State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Material Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, China; Professor, Joint Institute of Chemical Research (FFMiEN)

Prof. Francis Verpoort is a distinguished expert in organometallic chemistry and functional materials. He leads the Laboratory of Functional Hybrid Materials at Wuhan University of Technology and is the founder and CEO of SAIS Ltd, a company specializing in chemistry, materials, and engineering solutions.

Prof. Kyriaki Polychronopoulou

Full Professor of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering; Acting Chair and Director, Center for Catalysis and Separations (CeCaS), Khalifa University of Science and Technology, UAE

Prof. Polychronopoulou is an expert in catalysis and advanced materials, focusing on energy transition and alternative fuels. She is the founder and CEO of CeCaS spin-off ‘44Fuels’, dedicated to decarbonization technologies. Before joining Khalifa University, she held postdoctoral positions at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA).

Prof. Dmitri Bessarabov

Professor, North-West University, South Africa; Director, DST HySA Infrastructure Center of Competence

Prof. Bessarabov is a recognized expert in hydrogen energy and electrochemical technologies with extensive academic and industrial experience in Canada and South Africa. Since 2010, he has been leading the HySA Infrastructure Center of Competence at NWU and CSIR, focusing on hydrogen and fuel cell technologies.

Prof. Chao Chen

Associate Professor and Principal Investigator, Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, China

The main research interests of Professor Chao Chen are hypervalent iodine chemistry and electrophilic cyclisation. He started his independent research as an associate professor at Tsinghua University in May 2011.

Prof. Dr. Lutz Ackermann

Full Professor, Institute for Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry; Director, Wöhler Research Institute for Sustainable Chemistry, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany; Associate Editor, Chemical Communications

Lutz Ackermann studied Chemistry at the Christian Albrecht University of Kiel (Germany), and wrote his PhD with Prof. Alois Fürstner at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung (Mülheim an der Ruhr, 2001). After a postdoctoral stay at UC Berkeley with Prof. Robert G. Bergman, he initiated his independent research career in 2003 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. In 2007, he became Full Professor (W3) at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen.