Hubert Girault

Hubert Girault
Born (1957-02-13) 13 February 1957
Saint-Maur-des Fossés, France
Residence Switzerland
Nationality French
Fields electrochemistry, physical chemistry, analytical chemistry
Institutions École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Alma mater University of Southampton
Notable students Prof. Liang Liao (Fudan University),[1] Prof. Bin Su (Zhejiang University),[2] Prof. David Fermin (University of Bristol) [3]
Known for electrochemistry
Notable awards Faraday Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2006)
Fellow of the International Society of Electrochemistry (2007)
Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2009)
Reilley Award of the Society for Electroanalytical Chemistry (2015)
Website
lepa.epfl.ch

Hubert Girault (born 13 February 1957 in Saint-Maur-des Fossés, France) is a Swiss chemist and professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. He is the director of the Laboratoire d’Electrochimie Physique et Analytique, with expertise in electrochemistry at soft interfaces, Lab-on-a-Chip techniques, bio-analytical chemistry and mass-spectrometry, artificial water splitting, CO2 reduction, and redox flow batteries.

Professor Girault has authored more than 500 scientific publications, with more the 15,000 citations, and an h-index of 63. He has authored a textbook entitled “Electrochimie: Physique et Analytique”, which is published in English as “Analytical and Physical Electrochemistry”. Professor Girault is an inventor of more than 17 patents (including developing of ESTASI method of ionisation). In addition to his role as a professor at the EPFL, he is an Adjunct Professor at the Engineering Research Center of Innovative Scientific Instruments, Ministry of Education of China, Fudan University, Shanghai. He has served as a visiting professor at ENS Cachan (Paris, France), Fudan University (China), Kyoto University (Japan), Peking University (China), and Xiamen University (China).

Academic career

Hubert Girault earned his Engineering diploma in Chemical Engineering from the Grenoble Institute of Technology in 1979. Three years after that, in 1982, he completed his PhD thesis, entitled “Interfacial studies using drop image-processing techniques”,[4] at the University of Southampton, England. From 1982 to 1985, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Southampton, before becoming a lecturer in physical chemistry at the University of Edinburgh. In 1992, he became a Professor of physical chemistry at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where he continues to teach today. He is also the founder and director of the Laboratoire d’Electrochimie Physique et Analytique.[5] He has served twice as Chairman of the Department of Chemistry, now called Institute of Chemical and Engineering Science (ISIC) for the periods 1995-1997 and 2004-2008. He has also served twice as Head of the Chemistry Teaching Commission in charge of chemistry and chemical engineering education at EPFL, now called Section of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering for the period 1997-1999 and 2001-2004.

He was Director of the Doctoral Program in Chemistry at the EPFL for the period 1999-2000.[6] During the period 2011-2014, he was Dean of Bachelor & Master Studies at EPFL and has supervised a comprehensive teaching reform, with the definition of new Curricula starting September 2013. These changes included the introduction of a new first year curriculum with two-third of common courses for all scientific and engineering sections, and of a new Bachelor curriculum integrating more closely lecture courses, exercises and practical laboratories. He was involved in a major overhaul of the Master Programs and the introduction of MOOCs for specific courses. As Dean, he introduced measures to improve the quality control of education,[7] in particular by setting up, for each section, an academic commission responsible for auditing yearly all the programs. He also chairs the different admission committees both at the Bachelor and Master levels.

During his career, he has supervised more than 60 PhD students (+ 10 in progress) and trained many postdoctoral fellows. 25 former PhDs and post-docs are now professors in Canada, China, Denmark, France, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Singapore, UK & United States. Education has been a major part of his activities, and his lecture notes have formed the basis of a textbook entitled: “Electrochimie Physique et Analytique” (now in the third edition); translated in English “Analytical and Physical Electrochemistry”.[8]

Prof. Hubert Girault always had an interest in scientific publishing. Between, 1996 and 2001, he was associate editor of Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, which at the time was one of the major reference journals in the field. He is also the Vice-President of the Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes.[9] He has served on many editorial boards and is now serving as Associate Editor of Chemical Science (Royal Society of Chemistry).[10] Prof. Hubert Girault was Chairman of the Electrochemistry division at EUCHEMS (2008-2010),[11] and was the Chairman of the annual meeting of the International Society of Electrochemistry, Lausanne 2014.[12]

Commercial enterprises

Prof. Hubert Girault has been the founding Director of 3 companies:

Recognition

Girault’s work has been cited more than 15,000 times, giving him an h-index of 63 according to Web of Science (or 20,000 and 75, correspondingly according to Google Scholar).[13]

In 2006, he was awarded the Faraday Medal by the Royal Society of Chemistry.[14] The following year, he was named a Fellow of the International Society of Electrochemistry.[15] He was subsequently named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2009 (Ref). He received the Visiting Professorship Award for the "111 Project" from the Chinese Ministry of Education from 2008 to 2011. In 2015, he was awarded the Reilley Award by the American Society of Electroanalytical Chemistry.[16]

Current research activities

Redox Flow batteries

Professor Girault is also among the inventors of the dual-circuit redox flow battery (Ref), which enables indirect water electrolysis using the electrolytes of conventional redox flow batteries. A small scale demonstrator of the concept has been built in Martigny, Switzerland. The Martigny site is also home to the EPFL Grid-to-mobility demonstrator (proposed by Girault), which is a hydrogen and battery-electric vehicle fueling station utilizing a vanadium redox flow battery to buffer the energy demands of the fueling station.

Electrochemistry at soft interfaces

Also Hubert Girault is interested in self-assembly of molecular species and nanoparticles[17][18] at liquid-liquid interfaces and carrying out fundamental research on electrochemistry at soft interfaces.[19][20]

References

  1. ↑ "Liang Liao : Biography". fudan.edu.cn. Retrieved 2017-02-18.
  2. ↑ "Bin Su : Biography". person.zju.edu.cn. Retrieved 2017-02-18.
  3. ↑ "David Fermin : Biography". bris.ac.uk. Retrieved 2017-02-18.
  4. ↑ H., Girault, H. (1982-01-01). "Interfacial studies using drop image processing techniques.".
  5. ↑ "Laboratory of Physical and Analytical Electrochemistry".
  6. ↑ "Hubert Girault : Biography and current work". people.epfl.ch. Retrieved 2017-02-18.
  7. ↑ Dyson, Paul J. (2011-09-30). "Editorial". CHIMIA International Journal for Chemistry. 65 (9): 636–637.
  8. ↑ "Analytical and Physical Electrochemistry". CRC Press. Retrieved 2017-02-18.
  9. ↑ "La Fondation | PPUR – EPFL Press". fondation.ppur.com (in French). Retrieved 2017-02-19.
  10. ↑ Chemistry, Royal Society of (2016-02-23). "The Chemical science editorial board members". www.rsc.org. Retrieved 2017-02-19.
  11. ↑ https://chimia.ch/index.php?option=com_phocadownload&view=category&download=536:2008-03&id=138:2008-03&lang=en
  12. ↑ Bourgeois, Thierry Lenzin/Gil. "International Society of Electrochemistry, Annual Meeting". annual65.ise-online.org. Retrieved 2017-02-19.
  13. ↑ "Girault Hubert H. - Google Scholar Citations". scholar.google.ch. Retrieved 2017-02-19.
  14. ↑ http://www.rsc.org/Membership/Networking/InterestGroups/Electrochemistry/faradaymedal.asp
  15. ↑ "International Society of Electrochemistry". www.ise-online.org. Retrieved 2017-02-19.
  16. ↑ Papageorgiou, Nik (2014-05-05). "Hubert Girault to receive the Charles N. Reilley Award".
  17. ↑ Smirnov, Evgeny; Scanlon, Micheál D.; Momotenko, Dmitry; Vrubel, Heron; Méndez, Manuel A.; Brevet, Pierre-Francois; Girault, Hubert H. (2014-09-23). "Gold Metal Liquid-Like Droplets". ACS Nano. 8 (9): 9471–9481. ISSN 1936-0851. doi:10.1021/nn503644v.
  18. ↑ Smirnov, Evgeny; Peljo, Pekka; Scanlon, Micheál D.; Gumy, Frederic; Girault, Hubert H. (2016-03-31). "Self-healing gold mirrors and filters at liquid–liquid interfaces". Nanoscale. 8 (14): 7723–7737. ISSN 2040-3372. doi:10.1039/c6nr00371k.
  19. ↑ Scanlon, Micheál D.; Peljo, Pekka; Méndez, Manuel A.; Smirnov, Evgeny; Girault, Hubert H. (2015-04-20). "Charging and discharging at the nanoscale: Fermi level equilibration of metallic nanoparticles". Chem. Sci. 6 (5): 2705–2720. ISSN 2041-6539. doi:10.1039/c5sc00461f.
  20. ↑ Peljo, Pekka; Smirnov, Evgeny; Girault, Hubert. H. (2016-10-15). "Heterogeneous versus homogeneous electron transfer reactions at liquid–liquid interfaces: The wrong question?". Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry. Special issue in honor of Koichi Aoki. 779: 187–198. doi:10.1016/j.jelechem.2016.02.023.
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