Sparked by an early fascination with legendary scientists, Patricia J Kooyman has become a force in electron microscopy, designing the all-important nanoreactors that changed the way we see catalysts.

                     Professor Patricia J Kooyman at the recent International Zeolite Conference in Dalian, China.

When Professor Patricia J Kooyman was eleven years old, she borrowed a series of biographies of scientists from her local library. Marie Curie, Louis Pasteur, and Robert Koch were amongst the late-and-greats, and in Kooyman’s words, she ‘devoured’ their stories.

“I don’t know if it was this super-well written series that started it or if something had been planted before, but I was suddenly like, ‘I want to be a scientist’,” she recalls. 

Today, Kooyman is that scientist. Currently the SARChI Chair in Nanomaterials for Catalysis at the University of Cape Town, she has, for decades, been at the forefront of heterogeneous catalysis research, discovering new pathways that accelerate reactions to more efficiently drive petroleum refining, fuel cell energy generation, carbon capture and conversion, and more.

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