Hubert H. Girault

Hubert H. Girault

Hubert Girault (born February 13, 1957 in Saint-Maur-des Fossés, France ) is a Swiss chemist and professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) . He is the director of the laboratory for physical and analytical electrochemistry with expertise in electrochemistry at so-called soft interfaces, in lab-on-a-chip techniques, in bioanalytical chemistry and mass spectrometry , in artificial water splitting , in carbon dioxide reduction, and in redox flow batteries .

Life

Hubert Girault received his engineering degree in technical chemistry from the Grenoble Technology Institute in 1979 . Three years later, in 1982, he completed his PhD at the University of Southampton , England. His doctoral thesis is entitled “Interface investigations using drop image processing methods”. Between 1982 and 1985 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southampton before becoming a lecturer in physical chemistry at the University of Edinburgh . In 1992 he became professor of physical chemistry at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) , where he still holds lectures today. He is also the founder and director of the Laboratory for Physical and Analytical Electrochemistry. He served twice as director of the Institute for Chemistry, now the Institute for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, in the periods 1995–1997 and 2004–2008. He also acted twice, 1997–1999 and 2001–2004 (Ref), as head of the teaching committee for chemistry, responsible for teaching chemistry and chemical engineering at EPFL, which is now known as the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering.

Girault was director of the PhD program in chemistry at EPFL from 1999 to 2000. Between 2011 and 2014 he was the dean of the bachelor's and master’s degree courses at EPFL and oversaw a comprehensive teaching reform with the definition of new curricula from September 2013. He was involved in a fundamental overhaul of the master’s degree and the introduction of open mass online courses ( MOOCs) involved. As dean, he introduced measures to improve the quality control of teaching, in particular by setting up an academic committee within each department responsible for the annual review of all programs. Hubert Girault also chairs various admissions committees for Bachelor and Master courses.

In the course of his career he supervised over 60 PhD students (10 more are currently being supervised) and worked with many postdocs. 25 of his former PhD or postdoctoral researchers are now professors in Canada , China , Denmark , France , Ireland , Japan , South Korea , Singapore , the United Kingdom and the United States .

Hubert Girault has always had an interest in scientific publishing. Between 1996 and 2001 he was co-editor of the Journal of the Electroanalytical Chemistry. He is also vice-president of the publishing house “Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes”. He has served on many editorial boards and is currently Associate Editor of Chemical Science ( Royal Society of Chemistry ). From 2008 to 2010, Prof. Hubert Girault was head of the electrochemistry section of the European Association of Chemical and Molecular Sciences (EUCHEMS) and chaired the annual conference of the International Society of Electrochemistry 2014 in Lausanne.

Hubert Girault was the founding director of three companies:

• Dydropp (1982, dissolved 1986), active in the manufacture of video digitization units for surface measurements;
• Ecosse Sensors (1990, now part of Inverness Medical Technologies, USA), active in the manufacture of laser photo-ablated carbon electrodes for the detection of heavy metals;
• Diagnoswiss (1999, dissolved 2016), active in the manufacture of rapid immunoassay systems.

recognition

Professor Girault is the author of over 500 scientific publications with over 15,000 references and an h -index of 63 on the Web of Science .

He is also the author of the textbook “Electrochimie: Physique et Analytique”, which was also published in English with the title “Analytical and Physical Electrochemistry”. Professor Girault holds 17 patents. In addition to his position as a professor at EPFL, he is also an adjunct professor at the Engineering Research Center of Innovative Scientific Instruments, Ministry of Education of China, Fudan University , Shanghai . He was visiting professor at the École normal supérieure de Cachan (Paris, France), Fudan University (China), Kyoto University (Japan), Peking University (China), and Xiamen University (China).

Awards (selection)

• 2006: Faraday Medal from the Royal Society of Chemistry
• 2007: Fellow of the International Society of Electrochemistry ISE
• 2009: Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry
• 2015: Reilley Award from the American Society of Electroanalytical Chemistry

Current research areas (selection)

Electrochemistry at soft interfaces

Hubert Girault is interested in the self-organization of molecular species and nanoparticles at liquid-liquid interfaces and contributes a lot to basic research on electrochemistry at so-called soft interfaces.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Girault, HH: Interfacial studies using drop image processing techniques. . In: University of Southampton . January 1, 1982.
2. ^ Laboratory of Physical and Analytical Electrochemistry . Archived from the original on June 27, 2017. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved April 18, 2019. 
3. ^ Institute for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
4. ↑ Hubert Girault: Biography and current work .
5. ^ Paul J. Dyson: Editorial . In: CHIMIA International Journal for Chemistry . 65, No. 9, September 30, 2011, pp. 636-637.
6. ↑ La Fondation | PPUR - EPFL Press ( fr-FR )
7. ^ Royal Society of Chemistry: The Chemical science editorial board members ( en ) February 23, 2016.
8. ^ Thierry Lenzin / Gil Bourgeois: International Society of Electrochemistry, Annual Meeting . Archived from the original on August 8, 2016. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
9. ↑ Analytical and Physical Electrochemistry ( en )
10. Jump up ↑ Evgeny Smirnov, Micheál D. Scanlon, Dmitry Momotenko, Heron Vrubel, Manuel A. Méndez, Pierre-Francois Brevet, Hubert H. Girault: Gold Metal Liquid-Like Droplets . In: ACS Nano . 8, No. 9, September 23, 2014, ISSN  1936-0851 , pp. 9471-9481. doi : 10.1021 / nn503644v .
11. ↑ Evgeny Smirnov, Pekka Peljo, Micheál D. Scanlon, Frederic Gumy, Hubert H. Girault: Self-healing gold mirrors and filters at liquid-liquid interfaces . In: Nanoscale . 8, No. 14, March 31, 2016, ISSN  2040-3372 , pp. 7723-7737. doi : 10.1039 / c6nr00371k .
12. ↑ Micheál D. Scanlon, Pekka Peljo, Manuel A. Méndez, Evgeny Smirnov, Hubert H. Girault: Charging and discharging at the nanoscale: Fermi level equilibration of metallic nanoparticles . In: Chem. Sci. . 6, No. 5, April 20, 2015, ISSN  2041-6539 , pp. 2705-2720. doi : 10.1039 / c5sc00461f .
13. ↑ Pekka Peljo, Evgeny Smirnov, Hubert. H. Girault: Heterogeneous versus homogeneous electron transfer reactions at liquid – liquid interfaces: The wrong question? . In: Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry -Special issue in honor of Koichi Aoki . 779, October 15, 2016, pp. 187–198. doi : 10.1016 / j.jelechem.2016.02.023 .