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Biography Marcel Swart


M.Swart

Marcel Swart obtained his PhD degree in Groningen (NL) under the guidance of Profs Berendsen, Canters and Snijders. After postdoctoral stays in Amsterdam (Profs Lammertsma, Bickelhaupt), he was appointed ICREA Junior researcher in 2006 and in 2009 ICREA Professor of Theoretical Chemistry at the IQCC Institute and Dept. Chemistry of Univ. Girona (UdG).

He was Chair of the Young Academy of Europe (2017-2018), member of W&T4 Chemistry Expert Panel of FWO Belgium (2018-2023), Founding Member (2018) and Vice-President (2018-2023) of the QBIC Society, Chair of a COST Action (ECOSTBio, 2014-2018), Editor of a Wiley-book on "Spin states in Biochemistry and Inorganic Chemistry" (2015), main organizer for the Girona Seminars 2016/2018, and of the Theoretical Chemistry (S20, 2017) and Chemical Reactivity (S13, 2023) Symposium at Biennal meetings of Spanish chemical society RSEQ, and from 2015 until 2023 he was Director of the IQCC institute.
Currently, he is Editor of Inorganica Chimica Acta (2020-present), member of the Advisory Council of the YAE (2019-2024), member of the SAPEA Working Group related to the work package on ‘Early and mid-career researchers’ (WP6), Founding Member (2018) and Vice-President (2018-2025) of the RSEQ-GEQC specialized group on computational chemistry of Spanish chemical society RSEQ. member of the Editorial College of (Diamond OA) SciPost:Chemistry, Community Gateway Advisor Inorganic Chemistry and Collection Advisor Computational Chemistry for Open Research Europe.

He has been funded by research projects of the Spanish Ministry of Science (MICINN/MINECO/MCIU, 2008-2024), Generalitat de Catalunya (2009-2024), Red Española de Supercomputación (60 projects, 15.0M CPU hours) and the EU through a COST Action (H2020-COST-CM1305), participated in three other EU projects and forms/ed part of international projects. He has published over 150 papers, which have been cited ca. 8.000 times (Dimensions/CrossRef, 2023). He has delivered over 75 invited talks at international conferences and research institutions, including major conferences such as WATOC 2017, ICQC 2018, ICBIC 2019, ICCC 2022, EuChemS-InorgChem 2023, and the upcoming ICCC 2024, EuroBic 2024, and DFT 2024 conferences.

He has supervised 9 PhD theses, 2 of which have been granted the extraordinary PhD Prize, 2 were granted a Marie Curie Individual fellowship, and he is currently supervising 4 PhD students in Girona, and 2 remotely. He has also been coordinator of diverse actions of the Marie Curie Program including one Career Integration Grant, one Incoming Individual Fellowship and an International Outgoing Fellowship.

His research on the development of theoretical chemistry tools was awarded the Young Scientist Excellence Award 2005, the 2012 MGMS Silver Jubilee Prize, and a special award by the Serbian Chemical Society in honour of their 120 anniversary for his continuous support for advancing chemical sciences in Serbia, as first and only foreigner. He was elected Fellow of the Young Academy of Europe in 2014, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2015, and Member of Academia Europaea in 2019.

Academic career


2018-2023 Vice-President QBIC Society
2018-2025 Vice-President RSEQ GEQC #CompChem group
2015-2023 Director IQCC institute (Univ. Girona)
2009-present ICREA Research Professor at Univ. Girona
2017-2018 Chair Young Academy of Europe
2015-2018 Main organizer Girona Seminars on Predictive Catalysis
2014-2018 Chair COST Action CM1305 (ECOSTBio)
2006-2011 ICREA Júnior researcher at Univ. Girona
2004-2006 Postdoctoral position at Theoretical Chemistry (Bickelhaupt), VU Amsterdam
2002-2004 Postdoctoral position at Chemistry of Complex Molecules center, VU Amsterdam
1989-2002 Undergraduate and graduate studies in chemistry, University of Groningen
PhD at Department of Theoretical Chemistry, University of Groningen, Thesis: Density functional theory applied to copper proteins