Prof. Max García-Melchor

Max García-Melchor received his BSc in Chemistry and MSc in Theoretical Chemistry from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His Master and Doctorate studies, supervised by Prof. Agustí Lledós and Prof.Gregori Ujaque, involved the use of computational methods to elucidate the reaction mechanisms of several Pd-catalysed C–C cross-coupling reactions.

After obtaining his PhD in Chemistry in 2012, he joined the group of Prof. Núria López at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ), where he conducted postdoctoral research that allowed him to underpin the mechanisms and factors that govern several catalytic processes on metal oxides surfaces.

In 2014, he was a prestigious Beatriu de Pinós Postdoctoral Fellowship to conduct postdoctoral research in the group of Prof. Jens Nørskov at Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory under the supervision of Dr. Aleksandra Vojvodic. During this period, his research contributed to the understanding of the electrochemical water oxidation reaction catalysed by various metal-oxide-based materials, as well as to guide the design of high-performance catalysts for this process.

In 2016, joined the School of Chemistry of Trinity College Dublin as Assistant Professor in Chemical Energy Systems, and in 2022, he was elected Fellow and promoted to Associate Professor. There, Max leads the Computational Catalysis and Energy Materials (CCEM) Group and is one of the youngest funded Principal Investigators in the Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research (AMBER) Centre. His research group strives to use state-of-the-art computational methods to shed light on the underlying mechanisms of homogeneously and heterogeneously catalyzed reactions relevant to sustainable energy. His group also aims to combine this knowledge with artificial intelligence to ultimately impel the accelerated rational design of more efficient and cost-effective (electro)(photo)catalysts.

Throughout his scientific career, he has received several national and international awards, including the Emergent Scientific Talent Award (2022) from The Catalan Society of Chemistry, the Young Researcher Award – Modality “Group Leader” – (2022) from The Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry, the Roger Parsons Medal from the Royal Society of Chemistry (2021), and the Young Investigator Award (2020) from the Organometallic Chemistry Division of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry. Overall, he has co-authored over 60 research articles in top journals such as Science, Nature Communications, and Nature Energy, 1 book and 2 book chapters. Some of his research has been featured by Thomson Reuters as ‘Hot Papers’ for being top 0.1% of their academic fields, in various journal front covers, and in a number of international media. To date, his publications have received over 5,600 citations (h-index = 30). He is a member of several scientific societies and serves in the Advisory Board of various international journals, detailed below. Since 2021, he is also the Course Director of the MSc in Energy Science at TCD.