Green Solvents, 3 Volume Set

Walter Leitner was born in 1963. He obtained his Ph.D. with Prof. Henri Brunner at Regensburg University in 1989 and was a Postdoctoral Fellow with Prof. John M. Brown at the University of Oxford. After research within the Max-Planck-Society under the mentorship of Profs. Eckhard Dinjus (Jena) and Manfred T. Reetz (Mülheim), he was appointed Chair of Technical Chemistry and Petrochemistry at RWTH Aachen University in 2002 as successor to Prof. Willi Keim. Walter Leitner is External Scientific Member of the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung and Scientific Director of CAT, the joint Catalysis Research Center of RWTH Aachen and the Bayer Company.
His research interests are the molecular and reaction engineering principles of catalysis as a fundamental science and key technology for Green Chemistry. In particular, this includes the development and synthetic application of organometallic catalysts and the use of alternative reaction media, especially supercritical carbon dioxide, in multiphase catalysis. Walter Leitner has published more than 170 publications in this field and co-edited among others the first edition of “Synthesis using Supercritical Fluids” and the handbook on “Multiphase Homogeneous Catalysis”. Since 2004, he serves as the Scientific Editor of the Journal “Green Chemistry” published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. The research of his team has been recognized with several awards including the Gerhard-Hess-Award of the German Science Foundation (1997), the Otto-Roelen-Medal of Dechema (2001), and the Wöhler-Award of the German Chemical Society (2009).

Volume Editor – Volume 5 – Reactions in Water
Prof. Chao-Jun Li
Chao-Jun Li (FRSC, UK) received his PhD at McGill University (1992) and was an NSERC Postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University (1992-1994). He was an Assistant Professor (1994), Associate Professor (1998) and Full Professor (2000-2003) at Tulane University, where he received a NSF CAREER Award (1998) in organic synthesis and the 2001 US Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award (Academic). In 2003, he became a Canada Research Chair (Tier I) in Organic/Green Chemistry and a Professor of Chemistry at McGill University in Canada. He serves as the Co-Chair of the Canadien Green Chemistry and Engineering Network, the Director of CFI Infrastructure for Green Chemistry and Green Chemicals, and Co-Director of the FQRNT Center for Green Chemistry and Catalysis (Quebec). He is the current Associate Editor for Americas for the journal of Green Chemistry (published by the Royal Society of Chemistry). He has been widely recognized as the leader in Green Chemistry for Organic Synthesis in developing innovative and fundamentally new organic reactions that defy conventional reactivities and have high synthetic efficiency.

Volume Editors – Volume 6 – Ionic Liquids
PD Dr. Annegret Stark and Prof. Peter Wasserscheid
Annegret Stark studied pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of Applied Sciences in Isny, Germany. She conducted her diploma thesis in 1997 in the labs of R.D. Singer at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who inspired her to take up a researcher’s career in the field of ionic liquids. After finishing her PhD in K.R. Seddon’s research group at the Queen’s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 2001, she moved on to South Africa for a SASOL-sponsored postdoc in the group of H.G. Raubenheimer at Stellenbosch University (2001-2003).
Since 2011, she heads her own research group at the Institute for Technical Chemistry in Leipzig, Germany. Her research focus lies, on the one hand, on the elucidation of structure-induced interactions between ionic liquids and solutes, and the resulting effects on the reactivity of these. On the other hand, she is interested in the application of microreaction technology, e.g. in the conversion of highly reactive intermediates. Both, ionic liquids and microreaction technology, are exploited as tools with the goal to provide sustainable chemical and engineering concepts.

Peter Wasserscheid studied chemistry at the RWTH Aachen. After receiving his diploma in 1995 he joined the group of Prof. W. Keim at the Institute of Technical and Macromolecular Chemistry at the RWTH Aachen for his PhD thesis. In 1998 he moved to BP Chemicals in Sunbury/GB for an industrial postdoc for six months. He returned to the Institute of Technical and Macromolecular Chemistry at the RWTH Aachen where he completed his habilitation entitled “Ionic Liquids – a new Solvent Concept for Catalysis”. In the meantime, he became co-founder of Solvent Innovation GmbH, Cologne, one of the leading companies in ionic liquid production and application (since December 2007 a 100% affiliate of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt). In 2003 he moved to Erlangen as successor Prof. Emig and since then is heading the Institute of Reaction Engineering. In 2005 he also became head of the department “Chemical and Bioengineering” of the University Erlangen-Nuremberg. P. Wasserscheid has received several awards including the Max-Buchner-award of DECHEMA (2001), the Innovation Award of the German Economy (2003, category “start-up”) together with Solvent Innovations GmbH and the Leibniz Award of the German Science Foundation (2006). His key research interests are the reaction engineering aspects of multiphase catalytic processes with a particular focus on ionic liquid reaction media. The Wasserscheid group belongs to the top research teams in the development and application of ionic liquids in general, and in developing the ionic liquid technology for catalytic applications in special. For various reaction types the group has successfully demonstrated greatly enhanced performance of ionic liquid based catalyst systems vs. conventional systems.
Peter Wasserscheid has a scientific track record of more than 130 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals plus many papers in the form of proceedings. Moreover, he is a co-inventor of more than 40 patents, most of them in the field of ionic liquids.SET III – Green Processes: