Gadi Rothenberg is Professor at the Van `t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences at the University of Amsterdam, where he teaches courses on catalysis, thermodynamics and scientific writing. He has published over 80 papers in peer-reviewed journals and discovered two catalysts, for which he received the Marie Curie Excellence Award in 2004 and the Paul Rylander Award in 2006. Rothenberg also invented a method for monitoring pollutants in water, and co-founded the companies Sorbisense and Yellowdiesel. In 2007 he was voted 'teacher of the year' by the chemistry students. He is married, owns no car, and has a black belt in Shaolin Kung-Fu.