Excm. Sr. Jordi LLORCA i PIQUÉ
Biographical note: : Born in Barcelona in 1966, Jordi Llorca earned his degree and PhD in Chemistry at the University of Barcelona, where he later became Associate Professor and Ramón y Cajal Fellow. In 2005, he joined the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) and became Full Professor in 2014 as a Serra Húnter Fellow. He received the Distinction of the Generalitat de Catalunya in 2003, the Humbert Torres Prize in 2003, and the ICREA Academia in 2009, 2014, and 2019. He has served as Director of the Institute of Energy Technologies, the Center for Research in NanoEngineering, the Barcelona Research Center in Multiscale Science and Engineering, and as UPC’s Vice-Rector for Research. In 2017, he became an academic member of the Institute for Catalan Studies. He has published over 500 scholarly articles and authored 12 patents. His research interests range from the development of catalysts and photocatalysts for chemical reactions related to energy and environmental applications, to hydrogen technologies and the study and recovery of meteorites. Asteroid 2013 WD1 is named after him.
Reception speech: “Dels meteorits i l’origen de la vida a la Química Industrial”