Rate My Professor Theodor Agapie

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).