Manuel Moliner was born in Valencia, Spain, in 1979. He obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Valencia in 2003, and completed his Ph.D. at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), in Chemistry, under the guidance of Prof. Avelino Corma and Dr. Maria J. Díaz in 2008. At UPV he worked on the synthesis of new zeolitic structures for their application as catalysts in industrially-relevant chemical processes by using high-throughput methodologies.

Afterward, he completed a two-year postdoc (2008-2010) with Prof. Mark Davis at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), working on the design and synthesis of functional materials with application in different catalytic processes, mainly in biomass transformations.

He joined the ITQ as a “Ramón y Cajal” researcher in 2011, where his research lies at the interface of heterogeneous catalysis and materials design. At the present, he is a Tenured Scientist of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

He has published more than 50 papers in international journals, and is co-inventor of 17 international patents (10 transferred to industry). He has attended more than 30 international and national conferences, presenting several plenary and keynote lectures.

He has received different national and international awards, as the “SUSCHEM-RSEQ” to the best Ph.D. Thesis in chemistry in 2008, “EFCATS Thesis Award” to the best Ph.D. Thesis in the field of catalysis in Europe between 2007-2009, “TR-35 Spain” awarded by MIT in 2011 to young talents in Spain under-35, “Técnicas Reunidas-Chemistry” awarded by the Royal Spanish Academy of Sciences in 2013 to young scientists under 40, and the “FISOCAT-Junior” awarded by the Iberoamerican Federation of Catalysis Societies in 2014 to young scientists under 40 in Latin America.