Prof. Dr. Máté Bezdek

Born in November 1991, Máté grew up partly in Budapest (Hungary) and Calgary (Canada). He earned his B.Sc. (Hons.) in Chemistry from the University of Calgary in 2014, where he worked with Profs. Curtis Berlinguette and Warren Piers. Máté then pursued graduate studies at Princeton University with Prof. Paul Chirik. His doctoral research explored the reactivity of molybdenum complexes relevant to the synthesis and oxidation of ammonia. For his doctoral work, he received the Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellowship, Princeton’s highest honor for graduate students. After receiving his PhD in June 2019, Máté joined Prof. Timothy Swager’s group at MIT. There, he applied aerobic oxidation chemistry to develop gas sensors for environmental pollutants such as methane and hydrogen sulfide.

In September 2021, Máté established his independent research group at ETH Zürich as a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of Chemistry. His group develops molecular redox systems and functional carbon nanomaterials whose reactivity and properties can be tuned by electron transfer and light, with applications in chemical synthesis, energy storage and sensing.