Theodor Agapie

Theodor Agapie is the John Stauffer Professor of Chemistry and Executive Officer for Chemistry in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Born in 1979 in Bucharest, Romania, he earned his B.S. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001, where he researched atom and fragment transfer chemistry involving metal complexes, titanium-ketyl radical chemistry, and DFT computations to detail electronic structures with Professor Christopher C. Cummins, receiving the Chemistry Department's Alpha Chi Sigma Award for achievement in research, scholarship, and service. Agapie obtained his Ph.D. from Caltech in 2007 under Professor John E. Bercaw, investigating mechanistic and synthetic aspects of chromium-based olefin oligomerization catalysis and developing new early transition metal nonmetallocene olefin polymerization catalysts; his thesis received Caltech's Chemistry Department Herbert Newby McCoy Award for outstanding contribution to the science of chemistry. From 2007 to 2009, he served as a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, focusing on mechanistic aspects of biochemical nitric oxide synthesis involving nitric oxide synthase with Professor Michael A. Marletta.

Agapie joined Caltech as Assistant Professor of Chemistry on February 11, 2009, and was promoted to Professor of Chemistry in December 2014. His research in Chemistry develops new catalysts inspired by biological systems with complex inorganic cofactors, utilizing inexpensive first-row transition metals for small molecule activation relevant to renewable energy, including metal complexes for water reduction and oxidation, carbon dioxide reduction, dinitrogen reduction, dioxygen reduction, and multimetallic catalysts for olefin polymerization; efforts encompass bioinorganic models such as iron-sulfur clusters mimicking nitrogenase FeMoco with bridging carbide ligands and manganese/iron oxido cubanes modeling the oxygen-evolving complex in photosystem II. Key publications include "Coupled Microenvironments for Artificial Photosynthesis of a C₆ Oxygenated Product from CO₂" (ACS Energy Lett., 2026), "Molybdenum-Iron-Sulfur Cluster with a Bridging Carbide Ligand as a Partial FeMoco Model: CO Activation, EPR Studies, and Bonding Insight" (J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2025), "Liquid Multicarbon (C₃–C₅) Products via Combined Electrochemical CO₂ Reduction and Organometallic Ethylene-CO and Ethylene-CO–Dihydrogen Addition" (ACS Catal., 2025), and "Plastic from CO₂, Water, and Electricity: Tandem Electrochemical CO₂ and Thermochemical Ethylene-CO Copolymerization" (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2025). Agapie has received the Searle Award (2010), Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (2012), NSF CAREER Award (2012), ACS Award in Pure Chemistry (2013), Cottrell Scholar Award (2013), Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE, 2014), and Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2014). He instructs courses such as Intermediate Inorganic Chemistry (Ch 112), Advanced Techniques of Synthesis and Analysis (Ch 5 ab), and Senior Thesis Research (Ch 82).

Professional Email: agapie@caltech.edu