Léopold Demiddeleer

Dr. Léopold Demiddeleer has a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the Brussels University and is currently executive V.P. and Director of Future Businesses of SOLVAY S.A., a Belgian chemical group with a global reach. Having started his career in 1976 by teaching mathematics and physics, he joined the SOLVAY company in 1981.
Starting in catalyst research, he successively led different R&D entities of the group - polyethylene, high performance materials, global polyolefin’s research - before being appointed New Business Development Director for the Solvay Group in 2000. He is currently President of the EIRMA Board (European Industrial Research Management Association) and sits at the Advisory Board of 3 Venture Funds (Pangaea II, Vancouver - Conduit Ventures Ltd, UK – KAM, Korea).
He is a board Member of SolviCore, a joint venture between Solvay and Umicore for the development of fuel cells materials and a member of the academic strategic committees at Georgia Tech (Atlanta - USA), CEA (Grenoble - France) and Manchester Business School (UK). He was appointed as a member of Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique since 2009.