BIO

Dr. Prashanth W. Menezes received his Ph.D. (Dr. rer. Nat.) in 2009 from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids (MPI-CPfS) in Dresden, Germany, in solid-state, structural, and materials chemistry. He then joined the Technische Universität München in 2010 to work in the direction of inorganic chemistry with a focus on novel materials. Since 2016, he is the head of the inorganic materials group at Technische Universität Berlin focusing on energy catalysis and since 2021, he is also the head of the materials chemistry group for thin-film catalysts -CatLab at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB)

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His research focuses on the design, development, and structural understanding of novel unconventional catalysts in heterogeneous catalysis, especially in the area of redox oxygen catalysis, (photo)electrocatalytic water splitting, paired electrolysis, electrochemical redox reactions as well as in environmental (green) chemistry. In addition to the efficiency of the catalysts for practical large-scale applications, he has a keen interest in understanding the dynamic behavior of the catalysts by uncovering the nature of active species, surface/bulk structures, surface/interfaces, control of electronic structures as well as deriving structure-activity relationships of the catalysts using advanced in-situ (operando) and ex-situ techniques.

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