Prof. Dr. Lutz Ackermann has studied Chemistry at the University Kiel (Germany) and performed his PhD with Prof. Alois Fürstner at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung (Mülheim/Ruhr, 2001). After a postdoctoral stay at UC Berkeley with Prof. Robert G. Bergman, he initiated his independent research career in 2003 at the Ludwig Maximilians-University München. In 2007, he became a Full Professor (W3) at the Georg-August-University Göttingen. He inter alia received an AstraZeneca Excellence in Chemistry Award (2011), an ERC Consolidator Grant (2012), a Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Preis (2017), an ERC Advanced Grant (2021), an ERC Proof of Concept Grant (2025), and the Hansen Family Award from the Bayer Foundation (2025).
The development and application of novel concepts for sustainable catalysis constitute his major current research interests, with a topical focus on electrocatalysis and bond activation.