Eric Rivard was born in Gander, Newfoundland, Canada and completed his B.Sc. (Hon. Chem.) in Chemistry at the University of New Brunswick, where he studied fluorine chemistry with Professor Jack Passmore. He then completed his Ph.D. in the area of inorganic polymers at the University of Toronto in 2004 under the supervision of Professor Ian Manners. After NSERC sponsored postdoctoral work with Professors Jonas Peters (Caltech) and Philip Power (University of California, Davis), and a brief research stay with Professor Cameron Jones (Monash University), he joined the University of Alberta in 2008 where he is currently a Full Professor. He was a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Long- and Short-term Visitation Fellow in 2015 and 2023, an NSTC Visiting Professor at National Taiwan University (2023), an RCMS Visiting Professor at Nagoya University in 2016, and was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow (2017-2019). He was the inaugural Michael Lappert Lecturer (Royal Society of Chemistry) in 2016 and the recent recipient of the 2018 Strem Chemicals Award for Pure and Applied Inorganic Chemistry (Canadian Society of Chemistry). Eric is also an Associate Editor for the internationally known journals Dalton Transactions (Royal Society of Chemistry, RSC) and Aggregate (Wiley), and is on the Editorial Advisory Boards for Chemical Society Reviews (RSC) and Inorganic Chemistry (ACS). Research in the Rivard group largely focuses on fundamental main group element chemistry. The group's more applied interests range from the development of new molecular hydride and phosphide precursors to bulk and nanodimensional advanced materials, the exploration of new ligands for catalysis (such as those based on N-heterocyclic olefins, NHOs), and the synthesis of unique inorganic polymers containing heavy main group elements for next-generation optoelectronics.
