第454回触媒科学研究所コロキウム
Chemistry automation to reduce expert bias and navigate
the mechanistic maze towards rational catalyst design

Evgeny A. Pidko(TU Delft, Professor)

2023年6月20日（火）15:00—16:30（創成科学研究棟 4階 会議室B・C）
http://www.cat.hokudai.ac.jp/access.html
Catalysis plays a pivotal role in all chemical strategies towards novel more efficient and sustainable chemical
conversion processes for the valorization of renewable feedstocks such as biomass and CO2. Traditionally,catalyst development has predominantly relied on trial-and-error approaches. The grand challenge in the field
is to make a step towards the rational design of efficient catalysts for a given chemical reaction. This on one
hand requires a deep insight into the active site structure, the mechanism of their action, and evolution underoperating conditions; and, on the other hand, accessible tools to swiftly and accurately probe the relationships
between the catalyst systems’ primary characteristics (e.g. chemical composition, conditions) and thesecomplex phenomena defining their reactivity and catalytic behaviour.
In this talk, I will discuss our recent efforts in the automation of experimental and computational
catalysis methodologies to resolve active site structures and get an insight into the challenging and rare-event
chemistry of the catalyst deactivation pathways. The talk will be illustrated with our recent studies on relevant
zeolite-based heterogeneous catalysts and homogeneous catalysts based on 3d transition metal complexes.
Special focus will be on the formulation of the holistic view of catalyst performance and the introduction of
dynamic descriptors of catalytic activity. With these examples I will emphasize the need for integration of thecomputational and experimental workflows as well as the introduction of new expert bias free and operando
modelling strategies to construct representative and resolved molecular picture of complex catalytic
phenomena, and pave the way towards accelerated discovery of durable and efficient catalyst systems.
Prof. Evgeny A. Pidko was trained physical chemistry at the Higher Chemical College of the Russian Academiyof Sciences in Moscow, Russia and received Ph.D. in computational catalysis with prof. Rutger van Santenfrom Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands (2005-2008), where in 2011-2017, he was an
Assistant Professor of Catalysis for Sustainability. He spent summer 2012 as a visiting professor in the groupof Prof. Christophe Coperet at ETH Zurich to learn the art and science of synthetic organoemtallic chemsitry.
In 2016 he obtained an ERC Consolidator grant “DeLiCat” to learn, understand and control the deactivation
phenomena in hydrogenation catalysis. In September 2017, he moved to Delft Univeristy of Technology tobecome an Associate Professor and head of the Inorganic Systems Engineering group at the Chemical
Engineering Department, where he was promoted to Full Professor in 2020. He is a member of the advisoryboards of ChemCatChem and Catal. Sci. Technol. journals, and an editorial board member of Kin. Catal. andMend. Commun. journals. He is an author of >230 publications on various topics of computational, physical,inorganic, supramolecular chemistry, catalysis, and chemical engineering. His research aims at understanding
and development of catalytic systems for sustainable chemical processes including experimental andcomputational studies of the mechanisms and property-activity relationships in organometallic and molecular
heterogeneous catalysis. Besides science, Evgeny enjoys diverse literature and music, cooking and spending
quality time with his wife Svetlana and their kids Sasha and Stepan.
問合せ先： 触媒科学研究所・鳥屋尾 隆 助教（toyao@cat.hokudai.ac.jp・011-706-9165）
共催：触媒科学計測共同研究拠点，学際統合物質科学研究機構

454th Institute for Catalysis (ICAT) Colloquium