Motiar Rahaman

Motiar Rahaman was born and raised in a small village called Kadamba in West Bengal, an eastern state of India. He completed his schooling in the nearby town of Kalna at Kalna Maharaja’s High School, followed by a Bachelor’s degree (Chemistry honours, Physics, Mathematics) from Jadavpur University in Kolkata, the capital city of West Bengal. He then moved to Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state of India, to pursue his Master’s degree in Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) in Chennai. 

After completing his Master’s, he was awarded the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship and joined the University of Bern, Switzerland, in 2013 to pursue a PhD under the supervision of Professor Thomas Wandlowski. Following a tragic turn of events - Professor Wandlowski suffered a severe health crisis and unfortunately passed away after a prolonged stay in the intensive care unit (ICU) - Motiar was required to change both his PhD laboratory and research topic within six months of joining. He then joined Professor Peter Broekmann’s laboratory in the same department at the University of Bern in 2014 to work on the electrochemical conversion of carbon dioxide into value-added products. He successfully completed his PhD in 2018 and was awarded the distinction of Summa cum Laude, the highest honour, for his doctoral thesis. 

Motiar subsequently received a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Mobility Fellowship and joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge in 2019 to undertake his postdoctoral research on solar fuel synthesis with Professor Erwin Reisner. In 2020, he was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual European Fellowship, enabling him to pursue his research in the Reisner Lab. His works have been published in leading materials/catalysis/energy journals, attracting significant media attention and coverage by leading international newspapers, including the BBC, The Independent, The Sunday Times, Daily Mail, Euronews, and others. In 2021, he was appointed as a non-stipendiary Research Fellow at the prestigious St John’s College, University of Cambridge. In 2023, Motiar became a Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry (MRSC) and was awarded a Merit Fellowship by the University of Cambridge in recognition of his outstanding research and innovation.

Motiar joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Liège in March 2025 as an Assistant Professor and Academic Chair in Power-to-Fuel. His research focuses on the development of novel materials and catalytic processes to enable scalable and sustainable technologies, combining atomic-scale engineering with efforts to bridge the gap between fundamental materials insights and the large-scale implementation of innovative, renewable-energy-driven catalytic processes. The primary objective of his independent research is to contribute to the development of a sustainable, circular, net-zero future economy.