Gianfranco Pacchioni is Vice-Rector for Research at the University of Milano Bicocca. He received the degree in Chemistry at the University of Milano (1978) and the Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry at the Free University of Berlin (1984). He has been working at the IBM Almaden Research Center in California (1987) and at the Technical University of Munich (1993). Associate Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Milano (1988), he is now Full Professor of Solid State Chemistry at the University of Milano Bicocca (since 2000). He received various awards including the Nasini Medal of the Italian Chemical Society (1994), the National Price “Federchimica” (1996), the Alexander von Humboldt Award (2005). He is Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences (2009) and of the Academia Europaea (2012). He has been Chairman of the Department of Materials Science at the University of Milano Bicocca (2003-2009); of the COST Action “Inorganic oxide surfaces and interfaces” (2006-2010); of the Panel PE5 of the European Research Council for the Advanced Grants (2008-2012); of the Theoretical and Computational Chemistry Division of the Italian Chemical Society (2011-2013). His main interests are theory and electronic structure of oxides (bulk, surface, thin films, nanostructures), supported metal clusters, materials for catalysis, photocatalysis and energy production. Gianfranco Pacchioni is co-author of more than 400 papers with about 16000 citations (h-index: 68) and has given about 300 invited talks at international conferences and research institutions.