Year: 2015

Alex Pankiewicz’s Blog Post featured on Forbes.com

Undergraduate student and Tier One Scholar Alexander Pankiewicz participates in the UH Energy Ambassadors program and his blog post “The Paradox Of China — Rising Standards Of Living, More Pollution” was recently featured on Forbes.com. Read more in the Cullen College of Engineering News.

Congratulations, Dr. Ghorbanpour

The third Ph.D. graduate from our group this semester is Arian Ghorbanpour. Congratulations, Arian! Arian was co-advised with Prof. Jeff D. Rimer and his dissertation is titled “Computational Modeling and Advanced Synthesis Techniques for the Improved Design of Zeolite Catalysts”. In his Ph.D. work Arian focused on zeolite ZSM-5, which has many industrial applications, and …

Congratulations, Dr. Ghorbanpour Read More »

Congratulations, Dr. Baek!

Byeongjin Baek is the second student successfully graduating with a Ph.D. from our group. Congratulations! Byeongjin defended his thesis entitled “First-principles investigation of Bio-oil hydrodeoxygenation over Ru/TiO2” and is all set to continue his professional career at SABIC. We wish him all the best and a successful future.

Congratulations, Dr. Doan!

We congratulate and celebrate with Hieu A. Doan, who is the first student to graduate from our group. Today, Hieu successfully defended his dissertation titled “Computational Screening of Bifunctional Catalysts for CO and CH4 Oxidation”. A large portion of his Ph.D. work was based on productive collaborations with Profs. Bert Chandler and Chris Pursell at …

Congratulations, Dr. Doan! Read More »

Sashank receives AIChE CRE Travel Award to attend the 2015 Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City

Sashank Kasiraju has been selected as recipient of one of the AIChE CRE travel awards this year. The award includes a $400 check and a ticket to the CRE Division Dinner. Congratulations! Sashank will present his PhD research at this year’s AIChE conference in Salt Lake City in the session “Rational Catalyst Design II” on Thursday, …

Sashank receives AIChE CRE Travel Award to attend the 2015 Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City Read More »

Article on CO oxidation over gold catalysts receives Best Fundamental Paper Award from the AIChE South Texas Section

The South Texas Section (STS) of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) selected our paper “The critical role of water at the gold-titania interface in catalytic CO oxidation” for the Best Fundamental Paper Award 2014. Hieu Doan and Lars Grabow accepted the award on behalf of all co-authors, which include Johnny Saavedra, Chris Pursell …

Article on CO oxidation over gold catalysts receives Best Fundamental Paper Award from the AIChE South Texas Section Read More »

Strong presence and poster award at the 2015 OChEGS Symposium

Our group shows a strong presence at the 2015 Symposium by the Organization of Chemical Engineering Graduate Students (OChEGS) at the University of Houston with a total of 6 presentations and two notable honors. Byeongjin Baek was selected to give the opening presentation on “Experimental and theoretical insights into the hydrogen-efficient direct hydrodeoxygenation mechanism of phenol over Ru/TiO2(110)”. …

Strong presence and poster award at the 2015 OChEGS Symposium Read More »

Why are Ru/TiO2 catalysts so selective for direct deoxygenation?

Graduate student Byeongjin Baek’s computational work on elucidating the mechanism of direct deoxygenation of phenolic compounds on Ru/TiO2 catalysts has resulted in a new understanding of the roles of the support and the ruthenium metal nanoparticle. We find that for the selective C-OH cleavage to occur, it is necessary that the support can provide a …

Why are Ru/TiO2 catalysts so selective for direct deoxygenation? Read More »

Novel CO electro-oxidation catalyst makes cover page of Surface Science

Hieu Doan’s work on understanding the interplay of electronic and geometric effects governing the CO electro-oxidation activity of Pt-decorated Ru nanoclusters makes the cover of Surface Science. The work is a collaborative effort with the experimental group of Stanko Brankovic (ECE@UH) and is published in a special issue titled “Reactivity Concepts at Surfaces: Coupling Theory with …

Novel CO electro-oxidation catalyst makes cover page of Surface Science Read More »