Born in Poland, Prof. Rafal Klajn completed an MSc summa cum laude in Chemistry at the University of Warsaw, Poland, in 2004 and a PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University in Evanston (USA) in 2009. He joined the Department of Organic Chemistry at the Weizmann Institute of Science in that same year.
Prof. Klajn's research group focuses on supramolecular chemistry, which is the study of entities of greater complexity than individual molecules—assemblies of molecules that bond and organize through intermolecular interactions. He is also interested in developing new “smart” materials by integrating two types of building blocks: nanocrystals and molecular switches. Based on these studies, the group has recently fabricated reversible information storage media, in which information can be stored for desired periods of time.
Among his honors and awards are the 2019 Helen and Martin Kimmel Award for Innovative Investigation, 2018 Cram Lehn Pedersen Prize in Supramolecular Chemistry, and the 2017 Chemical Society Reviews Emerging Investigator Lectureship. In 2016, he received the Weizmann Institute Scientific Council Prize for Chemistry and the Netherlands Scholar Award for Supramolecular Chemistry. Previously, Prof. Klajn received the 2015 Outstanding Young Scientist Award of the Israel Chemical Society, the 2013 Victor K. LaMer Award from the American Chemical Society, and the 2010 IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) Prize for Young Chemists.
He serves on the advisory boards of several scientific journals, including Chemical Society Reviews, Chem, and ChemPhotoChem. He has recently organized several conferences, including the Annual Meeting of the Israel Chemical Society and Gordon Research Conferences on Artificial Molecular Switches & Motors, Systems Chemistry, and Self-Assembly & Supramolecular Chemistry.
Prof. Klajn is married to cultural anthropologist, translator, and Yiddish scholar, Dr. Aleksandra Geller. They have two children, Adam and Adela.