Marcel Swart obtained his PhD degree at Univ. Groningen under the guidance of Prof. Herman Berendsen, Prof. Gerard Canters and Prof. Jaap Snijders. After postdoctoral stays in Amsterdam, he was appointed ICREA Junior researcher and in 2009 ICREA Professor at the Univ. Girona. He was elected Fellow of the Young Academy of Europe (2014-19), Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2015), and member of Academia Europaea (2019). He organized the Girona Seminars on Predictive Catalysis (2016, 2018), edited the textbook on "Spin states in Biochemistry and Inorganic Chemistry" (Wiley), was Chair of COST Action CM1305 (2014-2018), and Director of the IQCC institute (2015-23). He is Founding Member of the QBIC Society and GEQC group of the Spanish Chemical Society. He is editorial board member for 3 scientific journals, Editor for Inorg. Chim. Acta, member of the Editorial College of (Diamond OA) SciPost:Chemistry, and Community Gateway Advisor Collection Advisor for Open Research Europe (EC).
Research interests
He focuses on the study of electrons in transition-metals during catalysis and in the formation of nanomaterials. He paved the way and designed new density functionals which enabled him to show how electrons flow in transition metal catalysts by jumping from one spin state to another, enabling the corresponding fingerprinting through computational spectroscopy (IR, NMR, UV-Vis, Mössbauer). His scientific excellence has been recognized through several honors and awards: he was awarded the 5th MGMS Silver Jubilee Prize for promoting young molecular modelers (2012), and was selected to contribute to “The next generation” 40 years anniversary issue of Inorg. Chim. Acta (2007). Recently, he received a special award in honor of his continuous support for advancing chemical sciences in Serbia (2017), as the first and only foreigner who has received it.
Selected publications
- Chandra B, Ahsan F, Sheng Y, Swart M & Que Jr, L 2024, 'A Tale of Two Topological Isomers: Uptuning [FeIV(O)(Me4cyclam)]2+ for Olefin Epoxidation', Proc Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 121, e2319799121
Wu T, Puri A, Qiu YL, Ye D, Sarma R, Wang YW, Kowalewski T, Siegler MA, Swart M, Garcia-Bosch I 2024, '- Tuning the Thermochemistry and Reactivity of a Series of Cu-Based 4H+/4e- Electron-Coupled-Proton Buffers', Inorganic chemistry, 63 - 20 - 9014 - 9025 - .
- Goswami S, Gill K, Yin X, Swart M & Garcia-Bosch I 2024, "Cu-promoted ipso-hydroxylation of sp2 bonds with concomitant aromatic 1,2-rearrangement involving a Cu-oxyl-hydroxo species", Inorg. Chem. vol. 63-43
- Ye D, Wu T, Puri A, Hebert DD, Siegler MA, Hendrich MP, Swart M & Garcia-Bosch I 2024, 'Enhanced Proton-Coupled Electron-Transfer Reactivity by a Mononuclear Nickel(II) Hydroxide Radical Complex', Inorganic chemistry, 63, 24453-24465
Selected research activities
He is member of the SAPEA Working Group on ‘Early and mid-career researchers’ (WP6), Steering Committee for Academia Europaea Barcelona Knowledge Hub, Advisory Council of Young Academy of Europe, Vice-President of GEQC of Spanish Chemical Society (RSEQ), and was member of three PhD tribunals. He was invited speaker at Chemistry@Sete, Contemporary Coordination Chemistry Copenhagen (C4), International Coordination Chemistry Conference (ICCC), European Biologic Inorganic Chemistry (EuroBic) and International Conference on Density Functional Theory (DFT) conferences. He is currently supervising four PhD students, and one postdoc.