CATALYZING SUSTAINABILITY:
Navigating the 2030 Agenda

Catalysis in modern society is a driving force, accounting for a significant part of the global gross domestic product (GDP). Catalytic processes also occur since the beginning of life on Earth, inside each living being, from the single cell up to the largest living organisms. However, since the late 19th Century, the concept of catalysis has been fundamentally associated to industrial processes development.

With the new millennium, the emerging environmental issues, together with changes in geo-political contexts, forced mankind to face new scientific challenges, thus pushing the direction of human development towards greener and more sustainable solutions. Society then rediscovered catalysis beyond the industrial applications, inspired from nature by using light, enzymes, or small effective molecules.

Greener and more sustainable catalytic processes began to complement the traditional ones, spreading innovation and excellence through all the branches of the catalysis realm. The idea standing behind the school is then to promote and enhance these connections between traditional and photo-, organo-, bio-catalysis: their synergy is essential to address the global challenges posed by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN2030 agenda.

Our goal is to engage all participants, through direct interactions between speakers and students, in a series of state-of-the-art topics in the field of catalysis, promoting an interdisciplinary and innovative approach to addressing the global challenges of our time.