Bas de Bruin studied Chemistry at Radboud University Nijmegen, where he obtained his master's degree in 1994 and his PhD in 1999. He then became an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Bio-Inorganic Chemistry in Mülheim a/d Ruhr (Germany). In 2000, he was appointed as Assistant Professor at Radboud University Nijmegen. In 2005, he moved to the University of Amsterdam (UvA) where he became Associate Professor in 2008 and Full Professor of Bio-Inspired Sustainable Catalysis in 2013. In 2008, Bas de Bruin obtained an ERC Starting Grant and in 2012 an NWO VICI grant. His current research focus is on the development of new tools in homogeneous catalysis, using metals in unconventional oxidation states and unconventional ligands, specifically aiming at the development of new catalytic reactions. In 2015 he was elected Teacher of the Year by the UvA students.

Chemistry Europe, formerly known as ChemPubSoc Europe, is the partnership of 16 European chemical societies publishing a family of high-quality chemistry journals. Among them ChemCatChem, ChemBioChem and Chemistry, A European Journal, which was established 25 years ago. Together with the publisher Wiley-VCH, a program of 16 journals has been developed to serve chemists around the world; more than 9,000 articles, ca. 250,0000 citations and ca. 13.5 million Full Text Downloads were recorded in 2019 alone.