Mario Ruben

Mario Ruben (born 5 May 1968 in Rudolstadt, Germany) is a German chemist and university professor. Since 2013 he holds the research unit chair "Molecular Materials" and is director at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology ^[1] and at the University of Strasbourg.^[2]

Mario Ruben studied chemistry from 1989 to 1994 at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena. In 1998, he obtained his PhD as fellow of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes with a work entitled Homo– and Heteronuclear Mg-Carbamato–Complexes for CO₂–Activation at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena in the research group of Prof. Dr. Dirk Walther. Afterwards, he completed a two-years research stay as DAAD-fellow at the University of Strasbourg in the research group of Nobel laureate Jean-Marie Lehn, where he habilitated in 2005 with a work on Functional (Supra)Molecular Nanostructures.^[3]

In 2012 he received a call to join the Faculty of Physics at the University of Münster, Germany, which he declined to accept a W3 Full Professor position at the Faculty of Chemistry and Biology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.^[4] In 2026, he received the European Research Council Advanced Grant.^{[5] [6]}

As of 2026, Ruben has 371 published works according to ORCID ^[7] and an h-index of 81 according to Google Scholar.^[8]

• CO₂-activation and –transformation^[10]
• Implementation of quantum algorithms in molecules
• Molecular battery materials
• Switchable magnetic compounds
• Optically detected nuclear magnetic resonance

• with C. Molina-Jiron, C. M. Reda, C. N. S Kumar, C. Kübel. L. Velasco, H. Hahn, E. Pineda-Moreno: Direct Conversion of CO₂ to Multi-Layer Graphene using Copper-Palladium Alloys. In: ChemSusChem. Vol. 12, 2019, Nr. 15, p. 3509 – 3514.^[11]
• with W. Wernsdorfer: Synthetic Hilbert Space Engineering of Molecular Qudits: Isotopologue Chemistry. In: Advanced Materials. Vol. 31, 2019, p. 1806687.^[12]
• with Z. Chen, P. Gao, W. Wan, S. Klyatskaya, Z. Zhao-Karger, C. Kübel, O. Fuhr, M. Fichtner: A Lithium-Free Energy Storage Device based on an Alkyne-Substituted-Porphyrin Complex. In: ChemSusChem. Vol. 12, Nr. 16, 2019, p. 3737-3741.^[13]
• with B. Schäfer, J.-F. Greisch, I. Faus, T. Bodenstein, I. Šalitroš, O. Fuhr, K. Fink, V. Schünemann, M. M. Kappes: Divergent Coordination Chemistry: Parallel Synthesis of ×ばつ2] Iron(II) Grid-Complex Tauto-Conformers. In: Angewandte Chemie Internationale Edition. Vol. 55, 2019, p. 10881–10885.^[9]
• with S. Thiele, F. Balestro, R. Ballou, S. Klyatskaya, W. Wernsdorfer: Electrically driven nuclear spin resonance in single–molecule magnets. In Science 344, 2014, p. 1135–1138.^[14]
• with R. Vincent, S. Klyatskaya, W. Wernsdorfer, F. Balestro: Electronic read–out of a single nuclear spin using a molecular spin–transistor. In Nature 488, 2012, p. 357–360.^[15]
• with S. Kuppusamy; D. Serrano; A.M. Nonat, B. Heinrich; L. Karmazin; L.J. Charbonnière; Ph. Goldner: Optical spin-state polarization in a binuclear europium complex towards molecule-based coherent light-spin interfaces. Nature Communs. Vol. 12, 2021, P. 2152, DOI:10.1038/s41467-021-22383-x
• with D. Serrano; S. Kuppusamy; B. Heinrich; O. Fuhr; D. Hunger; Ph. Goldner: Ultra-narrow optical linewidths in rare-earth molecular crystals. Nature Vol. 603, 2022, P. 241–246, DOI:110.1038/s41586-021-04316-2
• with E. Vasilenko; V. Unni Chorakkunnath; J. Resch; N. Jobbitt; D. Serrano; P. Goldner; S. K. Kuppusamy; D. Hunger: Optically detected nuclear magnetic resonance of coherent spins in a molecular complex. Nature Materials , 2026, 1-6. DOI:10.1038/s41563-026-02539-0

• Doctoral thesis of Mario Ruben in the catalogue of the German National Library.
• Mario Ruben at KIT and at the University of Strasbourg.
• Mario Ruben publications indexed by Google Scholar