Head of chair

After studying chemistry at LMU Munich, ETH Zurich and Imperial College London, Prof. Dr. Thomas Ernst Müller (MRSC) received his doctorate in chemistry from Imperial College London in 1995. After postdoctoral positions at the University of Sussex, habilitation at the Technical University of Munich and positions as visiting professor at NUS Singapore (2005) and the University of Tokyo (2005), he accepted the position as head of the CAT Catalytic Center development team at Covestro Deutschland AG in 2007. With his strong background in organometallic chemistry and heterogeneous catalysis, he increasingly focused his interest on the conversion of catalytic reactions into industrial processes. Accordingly, he developed the CAT Catalytic Center into a leading research center at the interface between the industrial partner Covestro and the academic partner RWTH Aachen University. His vision was to build a bridge between basic research and industrial application with his work. At Covestro, he then devoted himself increasingly to the fields of innovation and the protection of innovations as well as the evaluation of chemical processes. From 2018 to 2019, he held the position of Professor of Process Engineering and Process Technology at the RFH Cologne and was appointed to the endowed professorship of Carbon Sources and Conversion at the Ruhr University Bochum on March 1, 2019. His research focuses on the implementation of new chemical processes at the interface between the chemical industry and the energy sector. The overarching aim is to establish renewable raw materials in the chemical industry and to introduce new chemical energy sources. His achievements include the publication of more than 100 papers in scientific journals and more than 70 patent applications in the fields of sustainability, CO2 chemistry, hydrogenation of multifunctional molecules and polymerization reactions.