Stepan Sklenak
Biographical Sketch
Stepan was born in Brno, Czech Republic, in 1967. After completing his
undergraduate studies in Chemistry at Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic)
in 1990, Stepan received his Ph.D. at Slovak Technical University (Bratislava,
Slovak Republic) in 1995 under the direction of Professors Vladimir Kvasnicka
and Stanislav Biskupic.
Then Stepan was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship by the Technion (Israel Institute
of Technology, Haifa, Israel) and worked with Professor
Yitzhak Apeloig in 1996 - 1997. Following that Stepan went to Yale University
to continue his postdoctoral research with Professor Kenneth B. Wiberg (1998 - 2000).
Stepan spent 2000 - 2002 at the University of California San Francisco as a
postdoctoral associate with Professor Irwin D. Kuntz. In 2002 Stepan moved to the
Michigan State University to work as a senior research associate at the Center for
Biological Modeling.
In 2004 Stepan was awarded a Purkyne Fellowship (2004 - 2009) by the Czech Academy
of Sciences and became a Purkyne Fellow at the J. Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences,
Prague, Czech Republic. Subsequently, Stepan was a Senior Scientist (2009 - 2023) at the same institute.
In 2023, Stepan became a Research Professor at the same institute.
Click
here
to see Stepan's research during the course of his scientific life.
Stepan's current research focuses on quantum chemical calculations of zeolites
to model the structure, reactivity, catalytic activity and properties of zeolites.
Stepan together with Dr. Jiri Dedecek and Dr. Edyta Tabor received the 2020 Czech Intellect award in the Invention category
(Cena spolecnosti Ceska hlava PROJEKT, cena Invence)
for the creation and description of the structure and reactivity of new, unique types of reaction cationic centers of transition metals
in a zeolite matrix and their use in the oxidation of methane to methanol.
The Czech Intellect society together with the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic are the annual announcers of the awards of the same name
- the most prestigious Czech award for science and research
that scientists in the Czech Republic can achieve.
If you would like to contact Stepan, please send him an e-mail.