Paolo Fornasiero has held the Chair of Inorganic Chemistry at the Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Trieste, since December 2016. He currently serves as Vice-Rector for Research, Deputy Director of the Department, and Member of the Academic Senate of the University of Trieste.
He is a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences (2021), a Member of the Academia Europaea (2022), and a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (2025).
Professor Fornasiero's research focuses on inorganic chemistry, particularly the design and development of multifunctional nanosystems and their advanced applications in energy-related processes and environmental heterogeneous catalysis. He is co-inventor of three patents and has authored more than 350 publications in leading international journals, including Science, Nature, Nature Energy, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Advanced Materials, Angewandte Chemie, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Advanced Functional Materials, ACS Nano, and Energy & Environmental Science. His work has received more than 44,000 citations, with an h-index of 96 (Scopus) and 110 (Google Scholar).
He has delivered more than 300 invited lectures at international conferences, including 65 keynote and 25 plenary lectures, and has presented over 90 invited seminars and colloquia worldwide.
Since 2015, he has served as Associate Editor of ACS Catalysis and, since 2021, as Executive Editor.
His scientific achievements have been recognized with numerous awards, including the Heinz Heinemann Award from the International Association of Catalysis Societies (2016), the Edoardo Kramer Award from the Istituto Lombardo – Accademia di Scienze e Lettere (2017), the Rudolf Zahradník Lecture (Czech Republic, 2017), the Maria Teresa Messori Roncaglia and Eugenio Mari Award from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (2018), the Nasini Medal (2005), the Chiusoli Medal (2013), the Malatesta Award (2022), and the Chini Memorial Lecture of the Italian Chemical Society. In 2026, he was a member of the team awarded the Environment, Sustainability and Energy Horizon Prize by the Royal Society of Chemistry. He was also the recipient of a Visiting Scientist Fellowship from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2018).
Professor Fornasiero has served on several prestigious international evaluation panels, including the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant PE4 evaluation panel (2021–2022, 2023–2024, and 2025–2026), the Dutch Methusalem Grant evaluation committee (2023), and the international committee appointed to evaluate the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences (2025).