Günther Rupprechter received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry
from the University of Innsbruck (Austria). After being a postdoctoral fellow
at the University of California at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory, he became the group leader for Laser Spectroscopy and Catalysis at the
Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin (Germany) from 1999
to 2005. In 2005 he accepted a Full Professorship in Surface and Interface
Chemistry at Technische Universität Wien (Austria). His research emphasis is on
heterogeneous catalysis, particularly in situ (operando) spectroscopy/microscopy
on the model and technological catalysts, applied to studies of the mechanisms and
kinetics of processes relevant to energy and environment: hydrogen as a clean
fuel, methane reforming, CO2 hydrogenation and more efficient
automotive pollution abatement. In 2005 he received the Jochen Block Award from
the German Catalysis Society for “the application of surface science methods to
heterogeneous catalysis”. He became a corresponding member of the Austrian
Academy of Sciences in 2012 and a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences
(EurASc) in 2023. He is an Editorial Board Member of “Catalysis Letters” and
“Topics in Catalysis”, and Vice-Chair of the Austrian Catalysis Society. He is
“Director of Research” (Speaker) of the FWF-funded Cluster of Excellence
“Materials for Energy Conversion and Storage (MECS)”.
Luca Gregoratti received his Ph.D. degree in Physics at
King’s College London in 2003. He is the head of the Escamicroscopy beamline at
Elettra from 2001. Since 2019, he has been a member of the Elettra 2.0 project working
team for coordination of the beamlines and laboratories upgrade plan. He has
been a lecturer at schools such as “The ICTP School on Synchrotron Radiation
and Applications, Italy”, “The International Conference-School Advanced
Materials and Technologies, Lithuania” and the “HERCULES European
School-neutrons and Synchrotron Radiation for Science”. Since 2011, he has been
the Elettra contact point for the training programs in collaboration with the
International Agency for Atomic Energy (IAEA) and the International Center for
Theoretical Physics (ICTP). He is a member of the “International Advisory
Committee (IAC)” for the X-ray Microscopy Conference from 2015 and a member of
the Scientific Committee of the “Conventional and Highenergy Spectroscopies for
Surface Analysis—An Unconventional School for PhD students and Young
Investigators” from 2017. His research interests include surface science,
photoemission, absorption and microscopy.
