Leiden University
E-mail: irene_groot @ avs.org

IRENE GROOT is currently Associate Professor (tenured) at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry, Leiden University, in the Netherlands. She heads a group focusing on operando research in heterogeneous catalysis. Her group, which currently consists of 10 Ph.D. students and postdocs, investigates chemical reactions taking place at the surfaces of model catalysts while they happen. Her group makes use of state-of-the-art surface-science techniques operated at atmospheric pressures and elevated temperatures. Some of these techniques are developed in her group. Examples of techniques they use are high-pressure scanning tunneling microscopy, atomic force microscopy, optical microscopy, surface X-ray diffraction, and transmission electron microscopy. These investigations are complemented with more traditional surface-science measurements under ultrahigh vacuum conditions using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, low-energy electron diffraction, and Auger electron spectroscopy.