Other Faculty Members
Samantha McBride
Energy Research Interests: Dr. McBride’s research integrates interfacial science, fluid physics, and soft matter physics across multiple length scales to develop engineered solutions for critical challenges in water, energy, and sustainability. Applications include material design for sustainability, recovery of resources and energy from waste streams, CO2 sequestration, environmental remediation, desalination, and other problems within the energy-water nexus.
Monica E. McCallum
Daniel J. Mindiola
Energy Research Interests: The Mindiola group works on several fronts relevant to energy. We are currently developing simple-to-make catalysts using earth-abundant metals and exploring how such systems can polymerize terminal alkynes to cyclic polyalkynes. Another project involves the immobilization of well-defined metal pre-catalysts on oxide supports in order to prepare not only highly robust, but recyclable catalysts for the activation and functionalization of alkanes, including methane.
Christopher B. Murray
Saurabh Nath
Research Interests: At NLab, researchers build microclimates on the benchtop to study climate through the lens of soft condensed matter. By recreating complex climate phenomena like permafrost thaw and cirrus formation as lab-scale physical analogs, the NLab team can visualize their microscale physicochemical mechanisms and distill their essence to its simplest core. Rooted in the physics and mechanics of heterogeneous media (fluid dynamics, ice, interfaces, and living matter) these insights are leveraged to refine climate models, sharpen adaptation pathways, and lay design principles for new classes of advanced materials for sustainability, energy efficiency, storage, and climate-change mitigation.
Abraham Nitzan
Energy Research Interests: Theoretical studies of activation, relaxation and energy transfer processes in molecular systems. Transport phenomena in condensed phases and on surfaces. Theory of chemical reaction rates in condensed phases. Ionic diffusion and conductivity in solid ionic conductors, in polymers and in confined systems. Electromagnetic and electronic interactions in small particles and clusters. Theoretical investigations of charge transfer and charge separation phenomena in condensed phases, at interfaces and in nano-junctions.
Chinedum Osuji
Energy Research Interests: The Osuji lab advances research on the synthesis and processing of nanostructured self-assembled materials, including lyotropic surfactant mesophases, and block copolymers. These materials exhibit uniform and tunable nm-scale structure and chemistry, and are being developed for controlling neutral and charged-species transport in applications such as water nanofiltration, and separators for batteries and fuel cells.
Amish J. Patel
Iliana Pérez-Rodríguez
E. James Petersson
Energy Research Interests: We use chemical modification of peptides and proteins to provide new functionality for the environmentally friendly isolation and recycling of rare earth elements. Proteins with synthetic modifications are also being designed for novel photochemical catalysis and energy harvesting applications.
Yifan Quan
Yifan Quan's group focuses on developing advanced magnetic resonance techniques, including NMR and EPR, to investigate energy storage materials. Their research targets fundamental chemical and electrochemical processes in rechargeable battery systems, as well as host-guest interactions in metal–organic frameworks (MOFs). By elucidating local structure, dynamics, and magnetic environments, the group aims to establish structure-function relationships that inform the rational design of more efficient energy storage materials.
Andrew M. Rappe
Eric Stach
Energy Research Interests: The Stach Group focuses on the use of materials characterization approaches to understand the relationship between materials structure and function, using primarily electron, ion and x-ray microscopy techniques. We work collaboratively with many VIEST faculty in the areas of heterogeneous catalysis, solar fuels, electrocatalysis, battery materials and advanced electronics for energy efficiency.
Kathleen J. Stebe
Xin Sun
Research Interests: Sun is an environmental microbiologist and biogeochemist fascinated by how tiny microbes drive global biogeochemical cycles. Sun’s group integrates biogeochemical field studies, metagenomics, microbial ecology experiments, models, and theories to quantitatively characterize and predict microbial community assembly and nitrogen and carbon cycles in a changing environment.
Neil C. Tomson
