CEICS, Campus of International excellence southern catalonia Coordinated by URV · Rovira i Virgili University

Piet van Leeuwen received his PhD from the University of Leyden in 1967. Until 1994 he worked with Shell both in Amsterdam and the USA, playing a pivotal role in the emerging field of homogeneous catalysis. From 1979 to 1994 he was the Head of the “Fundamental aspects of Homogeneneous Catalysis” section of the company. In 1989 he started the homogeneous catalysis group at the University of Amsterdam, where he stayed until 2007. He held a chair of Industrial Homogeneous Catalysis at the Technical University of Eindhoven from 2001 till 2006, where he was also director of the National Research School Combination on Catalysis.

In 2004 he became Group Leader in the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ), Tarragona. He was the first chemist to publish research on the use of dendrimers in catalysis (Nature, 1994). His contributions on the effect of ligands in catalysis helped to establish new concepts used to enhance the efficiency of industrial processes. Prof. van Leeuwen was awarded a Marie Curie Chair of Excellence (2004), the Holleman prize from the Dutch Academy of Science (2005), an ERC Advanced Grant (2009), and in the same year he became Doctor Honoris Causa of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili.