Chair in Science and Society

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Chair FRP

Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and Director of the Molecular Nanotechnology Laboratory at the University of Alicante (UA), where he has carried out extensive teaching and research work in nanomaterials and their application in the energy sector. National Research Award 2024 and member of the emerging technologies committee of the World Economic Forum.

Javier García Martínez

Founder of the technology-based company Rive Technology, which commercialises the technology he developed during his Fulbright postdoctoral stay at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Rive Technology has raised more than $80 million in venture capital investment and employs more than 40 people. Since 2012, the catalysts marketed by Rive Technology have been used in several US refineries, significantly increasing fuel production and process energy efficiency. In June 2019, the multinational W. R. Grace acquired Rive Technology and now markets its technology worldwide.

Founder and president of Celera, a talent support programme in Spain that selects ten exceptional young people every year to give them resources, training and great opportunities. A hundred young people have already benefited from this programme created by Javier with the Rafael del Pino Foundation and in which several Spanish companies and institutions collaborate.

Javier is a member of the Committee of Experts of the World Economic Forum. In 2011, he was vice-chair of the Emerging Technologies Council and until 2015 a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council, which selected him as a Young Global Leader in 2009. Javier has been president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), during the 2022-2023 biennium, and vice-president of its inorganic chemistry division.

Javier's scientific and business leadership has been recognised with some of the most important awards. In June 2014, he was awarded the Rey Jaime I Prize in the category of New Technologies and since 2015 he has been the first Spaniard to receive the Emerging Researcher Award from the American Chemical Society. In the summer of 2017, Javier García was recognised by the American Chemical Society with the Kathryn C. Hach Award as the best US entrepreneur in the chemical sector. He has been Founding President of the Young Academy of Spain and a member of the Global Young Academy and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2024, he received the National Research Award ‘Juan de la Cierva’, in the area of Technology Transfer.