Clément Sanchez is Professor Emeritus at the Collège de France, Chair Chemistry of Hybrid Materials, and Professor at the Institut des études avancées de Strasbourg. He was Director of the Laboratoire de chimie de la matière condensée de Paris (UMR 7574, Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie - Collège de France - CNRS) (1999-2013). He spent a large part of his career at CNRS, where he was Director of Research as well as Professor at École Polytechnique. He obtained an engineering degree from the École nationale supérieure de chimie de Paris in 1978, and a PhD in physical chemistry from the Université de Paris-VI in 1981. He did postdoctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently carrying out research at UMR 7574 in Paris and USIAS in Strasbourg. He specializes in the nanochemistry of nanostructured porous and non-porous gels based on transition metal oxides, and porous and non-porous organic and inorganic hybrid materials in the form of monoliths, microspheres and films. He has created a new school of thought in materials chemistry and opened up a new disciplinary field with both fundamental and technological impact. He was the first to develop functional inorganic-organic hybrid materials, synthesized by " soft chemistry " combined with environmentally-friendly processing methods. He has been able to implement many of his fundamental concepts in technologies associated with hybrid materials, applied to adsorption, catalysis, protection, waste recycling and optics... He has organized numerous national and international conferences in the fields of soft chemistry and hybrid materials. He has received several national and international awards, and is a member of several academies of science.