Rafael Luque (Ph.D 2005 from Universidad de Cordoba, Spain) has a significant experience on biomass and waste valorisation practises to materials, fuels and chemicals as well as nanoscale chemistry (400+ publications, h-index 70, >21,000 citations, 5 patents, 10 edited books) as well as numerous contributions to book chapters and invited, guest, keynote and plenary lectures in scientific events worldwide. He is also heavily involved in Chemical Education and promoting Science in Developing Countries. Among recent awards, Rafael received the Marie Curie Prize from Instituto Andaluz de Quimica Fina in Spain (2011), the Green Talents award from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany (2011), the TR35 Spain from Technology Review and MIT as one of the top 10 young entrepreneurs in Spain (2012), the RSC Environment, Sustainability and Energy Early Career Award (2013) from the Royal Society of Chemistry UK, the 2015 Lu Jiaxi lectureship from the College of Chemistry and Engineering in Xiamen University (China) and very recently the 2018 ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering Lectureship award. Prof. Luque also combines his academic duties with his activities as entrepreneur after co‑founding Green Applied Solutions S.L.U. in Spain.
From January 2018, Prof. Luque is Editor-in-chief of Molecular Catalysis (Elsevier, i.f. 5.0), also serving in the Advisory/Editorial Board of over 10 Q1 RSC, Wiley, ACS and Elsevier Journals. Prof. Luque was named 2018 Highly Cited Researcher (Clarivate Analytics) and is currently Director of the Center for Molecular Design and Synthesis of Innovative Compounds for Medicine at RUDN University in Moscow, Russia (from 2018) and more recently became Chair Professor at Xi´an Jiaotong University in Xi´an, China (August 2019).