Michael Grätzel receives honorary doctorate from ENS Paris-Saclay

The École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay (formerly ENS Cachan) is one of the most prestigious Grand Écoles of France. Founded in 1892, it regularly honors major professors by awarding them the title of Doctor honoris causa, to recognize their impact in their respective fields of research as well as their contributions to knowledge transfer.

This year, the ENS Paris-Saclay awarded the honor to Professor Michael Grätzel along with another two distinguished professors, Charbel Farhat (University of Stanford) and Daron Acemoglu (MIT).

Professor Grätzel directs EPFL’s Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces and is known worldwide Grätzel is known worldwide for the invention of dye-sensitized solar cells (“Grätzel cells”), which became the launch pad for the development of perovskite photovoltaics. Dye sensitized solar cells are already manufactured on a multi-megawatt scale and perovskite photovoltaics are set to take over the market in the near future.

Professor Grätzel has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Global Energy Prize, the Millennium Technology Prize, the Marcel Benoist Prize, the King Faisal International Prize in Science, the Albert Einstein World Award for Science, and the Balzan Prize. He is a member of several scientific societies and already holds ten honorary doctorates from universities in Europe and Asia.

The awarding ceremony took place at the ENS Paris-Saclay on 6 October 2017 and the titles were bestowed by the School’s president, Pierre-Paul Zalio.