Enrique Iglesia was born in Havana, Cuba in 1954. He is the Theodore Vermeulen Chair Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley.  He also holds an appointment as Faculty Senior Scientist in the E. O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy.

His academic career started with a Bachelor of Science degree (summa cum laude) from Princeton University in chemical engineering in 1977, followed by a Ph.D. degree at Stanford University in 1982 with Professor Michel Boudart. Professor Iglesia then spent eleven years in research and management activities in heterogeneous catalysis and reaction engineering at the Corporate Research Laboratory of Exxon Research and Engineering before joining the University of California at Berkeley in 1993, where he currently acts as Director of the Berkeley Catalysis Center.

Professor Iglesia’s research group addresses the synthesis and structural and functional characterization of porous solids useful as heterogeneous catalysts for the production of fuels and petrochemicals, the conversion of energy carriers, and the protection of the environment through improvements in the energy and atom efficiency and the sustainability of chemical processes.  His work combines theory and experiment to bring novel insights into the structure, transport, and chemical properties of a broad range of porous solids useful as practical catalysts. Professor Iglesia’s group combines synthetic, spectroscopic, theoretical and mechanistic techniques with rigorous chemical and hydrodynamic descriptions of chemical reactors to bring novel concepts and practical embodiments into the areas of catalytic membranes, which couple reactions and separations to overcome thermodynamic hurdles, and of three-phase chemical reactors, which circumvent hydrodynamic inefficiencies prevalent in more conventional chemical reactors.

His specific interests in using methane and synthesis gas as building blocks to fuels and chemicals have led to pioneering advances and enabling concepts in C₁ chemistry, in which carbon-carbon bonds form from C₁ chemical precursors lacking such bonds.  In this area, his group studies catalysts and processes for the direct and indirect conversion of natural gas to higher hydrocarbons and for carbonylation, homologation, and condensation reactions that form new carbon-carbon bonds from synthesis gas, alcohols, paraffins, and olefins. His research has brought together the diverse and fragmented field of acid catalysis through mechanistic interpretations and fundamental insights into the consequences of acid strength for catalytic rates and selectivities, in a manner that has resolved long-standing controversies and provided predictive models for novel catalyst architectures. Professor Iglesia’s contributions to the use of hydrocarbons as hydrogen sources have led to unprecedented details about the mechanisms of synthesis gas generation and hydrogen transfer reactions and to state-of-the-art catalytic materials for these reactions, while also developing catalytic strategies for the rejection of oxygen atoms from molecules derived from renewable sources and for the removal of nitrogen oxides from combustion effluent streams via reduction or oxidation-adsorption processes.

During his professional career, Professor Iglesia has served as Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Catalysis, the premier journal in his field (1997-2010), as Chairman of the Division of Petroleum Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, and as Director of the Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He is a member of the editorial board for leading journals in chemistry and catalysis and currently serves as President of the North American Catalysis Society. Professor Iglesia was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2008 and was named a Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2010. He was awarded a Doctor Honoris Causa degree by the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia in 2007.

The outstanding level of his scientific research has been recognized by many recent awards. In 2012, he received the ENI Prize for “New Frontiers in Hydrocarbons” and the Gabor A. Somorjai Award for Creative Research in Heterogeneous Catalysis of the American Chemical Society and in 2011 the Alpha Chi Sigma Award for Excellence in Chemical Engineering Research of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the François Gault Lectureship Award of the European Federation of Catalysis Societies. The contributions from his research group have been recognized  with the George A. Olah Award in Hydrocarbon Chemistry of the American Chemical Society, the Award for Excellence in Natural Gas Conversion, the Wilhelm Manchot Chemistry Prize of the Technical University of Munich, the Richard H. Wilhelm Award in Chemical Reaction Engineering of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and the Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis and the Robert Burwell Lectureship both from the Catalysis Society. He was named the Cross Canada Lecturer of the Chemical Institute of Canada in 2011 and the inaugural recipient of the Tanabe Prize in Acid-Base Catalysis in 2009. Professor Iglesia received a Senior Scientist Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2007. Several awards highlight his dedication to teaching and education.  He has received the Noyce Prize, the most prestigious award for undergraduate teaching in the physical sciences at Berkeley, the Best Teacher Awards of the College of Chemistry and of the Department of Chemical Engineering, and the Award for Excellence in Teaching from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

Professor Iglesia has co-authored more than 300 publications and 40 U.S. patents.