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.