Professor Ehud Keinan is Benno Gitter & Ilana Ben-Ami Professor of Chemistry at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He was born and educated in Israel, gained his Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science with Prof. Y. Mazur and postdoc at the University of Wisconsin with Prof. B.M. Trost.
Prof. Keinan’s fields of interest include biocatalysis with antibodies and synthetic enzymes, organic synthesis, molecular-computing, supra-molecular chemistry, improvised explosives, and drug discovery. He has published nearly 200 research papers, 22 patents and four books. He was Dean of the Technion Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, and an Adjunct Professor at The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California (1991-2014). He was also the founder and first Head of the Institute of Catalysis Science and Technology (ICST) in the Technion and has founded two startup companies. He served as Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Sciences, GTIIT, Guangdong, China (2015-2016), and since 2020 he holds a Distinguished Visiting Chair at the Academia Sinica, Taiwan. He was Member of the Executive Board of EuChemS (2012-2015).
Prof. Keinan has been Editor-in-Chief of the Israel Journal of Chemistry (Wiley-VCH) since 2009, President of the Israel Chemical Society for more than 15 years (since 2009), Member of the Executive Committee and Director of Communications at the Federation of Asian Chemical Societies (FACS), Editor-in-Chief of the AsiaChem magazine, Founder and first Editor of the ICE magazine, Member of the Council of the Wolf Foundation, Chairman of the Advisory Council of High School Chemistry at the Ministry of Education (since 2009), Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Bowei Research Conferences, and Chairman of IUPAC’s Science Board. He took up the role of President of IUPAC on January 1, 2024.
Keinan is a recipient of the New England Award for Academic Excellence, the Shannon Award, the CapCure Award, the Herschel-Rich Award, the Technion Prize for security technologies, the Henri Taub Prize for scientific excellence, and the Schulich Prize, the Engagement Leader of the Year Award from the Asia-Pacific Triple E Awards, and the 2020 Award of Service from EuChemS. The Makor Rishon magazine selected him as “Man of the Year” of 2017. He has been an AAAS Fellow since 2010 and a Fellow of the American Chemical Society since 2021.
Keinan initiated and led several national projects in Israel, including the Archimedes and Negev-Nobel projects, promoting gifted high-school pupils, and the Chemistry Olympiad. He designed and produced four Israeli stamps commemorating the Nobel Prizes in Chemistry awarded to 6 Israeli scientists. Keinan is a public writer and activist on science education, higher education, public policy on energy and chemical industry.
This page was updated in October 2024.
