Javier García Martínez is a Professor of Organic Chemistry and the Director of the Molecular Nanotechnology Laboratory at the University of Alicante. He is also a fellow at the Rafael del Pino Foundation and the director of the report on technology and competitiveness of the Spanish economy.
He founded the tech company Rive Technology, which sells the technology he developed during his postdoctoral Fulbright scholarship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The catalysts developed by Javier are used in several refineries, greatly increasing the efficiency of the process and reducing CO2 emissions. In June 2019, the chemical multinational Grace bought Rive Technology and now sells its technology around the world.
He is also the founder and chairman of Celera, a talent support program in Spain that annually selects ten exceptional young people to give them resources, training and great opportunities. 70 youth have participated in this program created by Javier and the Rafael del Pino Foundation with which several Spanish companies and institutions collaborate.
President-elect of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry for the 2022-2023 period, he has also been president of the Academia Joven de España (Young Academy of Spain) since June 2019, and a Board member and Advisory Council member of the Fundación Gadea por la Ciencia (Gadea Foundation for Science) since January 2020.
Javier’s scientific and corporate leadership has been recognized with some of the top awards. In June 2014, he was presented the Rey Jaime I Award in the new technologies category, and in 2015 he became the first Spaniard to receive the American Chemical Society’s Emerging Researcher Award. In the summer of 2017, Javier was recognized by the same organization as the best entrepreneur in the U.S. in the chemical sector. Javier is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies and of the Global Young Academy, and a Fellow at the Royal Society of Chemistry.
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