Han Zuilhof

Han Zuilhof
Han Zuilhof, Chair of Organic Chemistry, Wageningen University, 2015
Born	(1965-05-21) May 21, 1965 Sassenheim
Nationality	Dutch
Scientific career
Fields	Organic Chemistry, Bionanotechnology, Surface Science
Institutions	Wageningen University AFSG

Han Zuilhof (born 1965) holds the chair of organic chemistry at Wageningen University. His interests focus on surface-bound (bio-)organic chemistry and bionanotechnology.

Zuilhof obtained an MSc in chemistry and MA in philosophy from Leiden University. After a PhD in organic chemistry (Leiden University, 1994) and postdoctoral work at the University of Rochester and Columbia University, he joined the faculty at Wageningen University. He has been a professor of organic chemistry since 2007. He is an adjunct professor of chemical engineering at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and a perennial guest professor of molecular science and medicinal chemistry at the school of pharmaceutical science and technology (SPST) at Tianjin University, China.

He serves/served on the editorial advisory boards of Langmuir, Advanced Materials Interfaces and Applied Surface Science and was a senior editor of Langmuir from 2016 to 2020. In 2021, as part of a team led by Barry Sharpless, he shared the Robert Robinson Award in Synthetic Organic Chemistry by the Royal Society of Chemistry for contributions to click chemistry. He is also the founder (2011) of a spin-off company, Surfix.

Among his recent accomplishments are the discovery of tiara[5]arenes, the first intrinsically chiral click reaction (no chiral auxiliary or catalyst needed), and the synthesis and structure elucidation of SOF4-based SuFEx-derived polymers.