Richard van de Sanden is the scientific director of the Eindhoven Institute for Renewable Energy Systems (EIRES) and a professor at the Department of Applied Physics of the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. He is also a research group leader at the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research (DIFFER) where he has been director from 2011 until July 2020.

He is a member of several (scientific) advisory boards for (inter-)national programs, institutes and departments. Since 2017 he is the chairman of the advisory committee on Electrochemical Conversion and Materials (ECCM), and an active member of the Energy committee of the European Academies for Science Advisory Council (EASAC). 

He received his Ph.D. in 1991 from the Eindhoven University on a fundamental plasma physics subject. In 1990, he was appointed an Assistant Professor, his main interest being the fundamentals of plasma assisted processing of materials. In 2000, he was appointed as a full-time professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology. At the DIFFER institute he focuses on the physics and chemistry of plasma-surface interaction and on research into the direct and indirect conversion of renewable energy into synthetic fuels and chemicals.

In 2008 he has won the European William Crookes Plasma Prize. In 2009 he was awarded the Valorisation Prize for his achievements in transferring scientific knowledge to industry. Since 2013 he is a member of the Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2014 he won the Plasma Prize of the AVS Plasma Science and Technology Division for his career achievements.. In 2018 he won the Lloyd Thomas prize of the Rarefied Gas Dynamics community.

He has authored and co-authored over 500 papers in peer-reviewed journals and is the co-inventor of > 20 patents. He is a fellow of AVS, IUPAC, IOP and IPCS and serves on numerous scientific committees of international conferences and (inter-)national advisory boards. He has consulted for several companies (General Electric, Fujifilm, Novellus, BOC Edwards, Linde Gas Group, Tetrapak). Since 2015 he is a senior member of the Editorial board of Plasma Sources: Science and Technology and is a member of the editorial board of Plasma Processes and Polymers, Applied Sciences and Global Transitions.