SHORT RÉSUMÉ
 
Professor Thomas Bürgi was born in Aarberg in 1965. He graduated in chemistry from the University of Bern in 1991 and received his PhD in 1995 under the supervision of Prof. Leutwyler. After a postdoctoral stay in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he moved back to Switzerland in 1997 for a position of lecturer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich. He was appointed Professor in physical chemistry at the University of Bern in 2003, then Professor in physical chemistry at the University of Heidelberg in 2008, before joining the University of Geneva in 2010 as full Professor.

TEACHING ACTIVITIES
 
Thomas Bürgi teaches the advanced in situ spectroscopic methods and their applications to mechanistic studies of chemical reactions to students following the MSc in chemistry.

RESEARCH INTERESTS
 
Professor Bürgi focusses his research toward three main axes: Surface chemistry, nanochemistry, and development of in situ spectroscopic methods.
These subjects cover the following aspects: Modification of surfaces with polymers for applications with biosensors, preparation and characterizationof metal nano-aggregates, chiral surfaces and nanoparticles, mechanistic studies of heterogeneous catalytic reactions, and conformational determination of molecules in solution.

THE 5 KEY REFERENCES OF PROFESSOR BÜRGI
 
C. Gautier and T. Bürgi (2010).
Vibrational Circular Dichroism of Adsorbed Molecules: BINAS on Gold Nanoparticles.
J. Phys. Chem. C, 114, 15897-15902.
 
T. Bürgi and A. Baiker (2006).
Attenuated Total Reflection Infrared Spectroscopy of Solid Catalysts Functioning in the Presence of Liquid-Phase Reactants.
Adv. Catalys., 50, 227-283.
 
T. Bürgi and A. Baiker (2004).
Heterogeneous Enantioselective Hydrogenation over Cinchona Alkaloid Modified Platinum: Mechanistic Insights into a Complex Reaction.
Acc. Chem. Res., 37, 909-917.
 
T. Bürgi and A. Baiker (2002).
In Situ Infrared Spectroscopy of Catalytic Solid-Liquid Interfaces Using Phase-Sensitive Detection: Enantioselective Hydrogenation of a Pyrone over Pd/TiO₂.
J. Phys. Chem. B, 106, 10649-10658.
 
L. Palais and A. Alexakis (2001).
An In Situ Attenuated Total Reflection Infrared Study of a Chiral Catalytic Solid-Liquid Interface: Cinchonidine Adsorption on Pt.
J. Am. Chem. Soc., 123, 12074-12084.