Rodolphe Clérac - Biography#

R. Clérac received his education in Physical-Chemistry at the University of Bordeaux, France. His Ph.D. work was devoted to the physical properties of molecular antiferromagnetic materials under the supervision of C. Coulon (defended in 1997). After a short post-doctoral stay in the group of O. Kahn (ICMCB, Bordeaux), he joined K. R. Dunbar’s group in 1998 at Michigan State University (East Lansing, USA) and worked on the magnetic properties of molecule-based materials. In 1999, he moved with Dunbar’s group to Texas A&M (College Station, USA) where he collaborated with F.A. Cotton on the magnetic properties of metal-metal bonded complexes. He joined the University of Bordeaux in 2000, as associate professor, then in 2008 became full CNRS researcher, got his Habilitation in 2011 and was promoted CNRS Research Director in 2013. Since 2001, Dr. Clérac developed at the Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal (CNRS) a research team on “molecular materials & magnetism” interested in the synthesis and physical studies of molecular materials including (i) macroconjugated polyaromatic molecules, (ii) molecule-based magnets, single-molecule and single-chain magnets with high blocking temperatures or photo-switching properties, (iii) spin-crossover and paramagnetic metal-metal bonded complexes, and (iv) magnetic and/or electro-active solutions and liquid-crystals. During his career, R. Clérac has trained 31 postdocs, 25 PhD students, 22 Master students, 48 visiting PhD students (for short training period) and 24 undergraduate students. Importantly, R. Clérac developed a scientific network of active collaborations across the globe with currently 74 groups in 25 different countries. He has co-authored over 500 research papers (h = 78, more than 23000 citations) and received several awards including the France-Berkeley fund award in 2017, the National Chinese Award of the “1000 Talents Program” in 2014 and the Young Researcher award of the French "Division de Chimie-Physique" in 2009.