Berend Smit elected to the Dutch Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) has just announced 17 new members, and among them is Berend Smit, professor of chemical engineering at EPFL an and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Simulation (LSMO). Smit, who was born and raised in the Netherlands and educated at the universities of Delft and Utrecht, was elected as a “foreign member”, acknowledging his work outside the Netherlands: first in France, the at the University of California at Berkeley, and since 2014 at EPFL. 

The official motivation states:

“Berend Smit developed simulation methods for important chemical processes involving nano-porous materials. To understand and simulate these nano-porous materials, the absorption and transport properties of the molecules in such nano-porous materials are needed. But these could hardly be calculated until Smit developed completely new simulation methods. Smit's research has thus made possible the understanding and targeted design of nano-porous materials. Applications include capturing the greenhouse gas CO2 and other chemical technologies that are now of great importance for the climate”.

Within MARVEL phase I, Smit was part of the Executive Committee and was a group leader in Horizontal Project 4. During phase II, he has been MARVEL Deputy Director. He was also the project leader of Design & Discovery Project 4. In MARVEL phase III, since May 2022, he has been project leader of Pillar 1, Design and Discovery of Novel Materials.