Arjan W. Kleij was born in Rotterdam (The Netherlands) in 1971.
He received his MSc (honours, 1996) and PhD (cum laude, 2000) in Chemistry from the University of Utrecht working in the group of Prof. Gerard van Koten on the application of dendrimer- and hyperbranched polymer-supported homogeneous catalysts structures. He then moved to Industry expanding his research experience and worked for more than 3 years at Avantium Technologies as a Project Leader in its pharmaceutical branch, and at a later stage of his career at Hexion Specialty Chemicals as a Research Scientist in the Epoxy & Phenolic Resins Division focusing on process optimization of chemical intermediates for coating applications.
During this period, he was also awarded a TALENT-fellowship from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research that allowed him to join the supramolecular chemistry group of Javier de Mendoza (Madrid, Spain) as a postdoctoral fellow. Afterwards, he continued postdoctoral work with Joost Reek and Piet van Leeuwen at the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands) in the field of supramolecular chemistry & catalysis.
In October 2006 he accepted a position as Group Leader at ICIQ which is co-funded by ICREA. On a part-time basis, he also provides consultancy services for industrial partners.
His research interests span the areas of (in)organic & supramolecular chemistry, and sustainable solutions in homogeneous catalysis. To this end, his research group utilizes the salen scaffold in various types of materials including multinuclear complexes for cooperative/multi-step catalytic conversions, new sensors and synthetic receptors. Their implementation as synthons in supramolecular science is also pursued.
Arjan has (co-)authored so far about 60 international journal publications (of which the last 35 were communicated in the last three years) and his current citations are beyond 1300. His current H-index ranks around 23.