Clément Sanchez is Professor Emeritus at the Collège de France, holding the Chair in Hybrid Materials Chemistry, and a professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Strasbourg. He served as director of the Paris Laboratory of Condensed Matter Chemistry (UMR 7574, Pierre-et-Marie-Curie University – Collège de France – CNRS) from 1999 to 2013.
He spent much of his career at the CNRS, where he served as a research director while also holding a professorship at the École Polytechnique. He earned an engineering degree from the École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris in 1978 and a doctoral degree in physical chemistry from the University of Paris-VI in 1981. He completed postdoctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently conducting research at UMR 7574 in Paris and at USIAS in Strasbourg.
Clément Sanchez specializes in the nanochemistry of porous and non-porous nanostructured gels based on transition metal oxides, as well as porous and non-porous organic-inorganic hybrid materials in the form of monoliths, microspheres, and films. He has established a new school of thought in materials chemistry and opened up a new disciplinary field with both fundamental and technological implications.
He was the first to develop functional inorganic-organic hybrid materials, synthesized using “soft chemistry” combined with environmentally friendly processing methods. He has successfully applied many of his fundamental concepts to technologies involving hybrid materials, including adsorption, catalysis, protection, waste recycling, and optics...
He has organized numerous national and international conferences in the fields of green chemistry and hybrid materials. He has received several national and international awards and is a member of several academies of sciences.