Richard van de Sanden is the director of the Dutch Instute for Fundamental Energy Research (DIFFER since 2011) and a Professor at the Department of Applied Physics of the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. 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 enhanced deposition and etching. During 1992-1997, he was a Research Fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2000, he was appointed as a full-time professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Since his appointment at the DIFFER institute he focuses on the physics and chemistry of plasma-surface interaction under extreme conditions and on research into the direct and indirect conversion of renewable energy into 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 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 2017 he became a fellow of the International Plasma Chemistry Society. In 2018 he won the Lloyd Thomas prize of the Rarefied Gas Dynamics community (2018).

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.