Gianfranco Pacchioni is Vice-Rector for Research Center at the University of Milano Bicocca. He received the degree in Chemistry at the University of Milano (1978) and the Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry at the Freie Universität of Berlin (1984). He has been working at the IBM Almaden Research Center in California (1987) and at the Technical University of Munich (1993). He received various awards including the Nasini Medal of the Italian Chemical Society (1994), the National Price “Federchimica” (1996), the Alexander von Humbold Award (2005). He is Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences (2009) and of the Academia Europaea (2012). He has been Chairman of the COST Action “Inorganic oxide surfaces and interfaces”, of the Panel PE5 of the European Research Council for the Advanced Grants, of the Theoretical and Computational Chemistry Division of the Italian Chemical Society (2011-2013). Gianfranco Pacchioni is author of more than 400 papers with about 15000 citations (h-index: 67) and has given about 300 invited talks at international conferences and research institutions.

Electronic structure and The theoretical description of oxides (bulk, surface, thin films), of supported metal clusters and their role in Surface chemistry, Catalysis, Photocatalysis and Energy production.