UChicago PME Materials Seminar - Paul J.A. Kenis

"Towards Electrifying Chemical Manufacturing" 

Paul J.A. Kenis is a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where he holds the Elio E. Tarika endowed Chair. He presently serves as the Director of the School of Chemical Sciences. He received a B.S. in chemistry, from Nijmegen Radboud University, and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering, from the University of Twente, both in the Netherlands. Before joining Illinois he was a postdoc at Harvard University. 

He is an author of >220 publications and 14 patents. His research program pursues (1) electrochemical approaches for chemical manufacturing, including ammonia oxidation and water electrolysis for hydrogen production, CO2 / CO reduction, and glycerol oxidation, often from renewable resources such as CO2, air, flue gasses, and biomass, e.g., crude glycerol; and (2) autonomous/automated synthesis, purification, and characterization of inorganic nanomaterials such as quantum dots and catalyst particles. He has been recognized with a Xerox award, a 3M young faculty award, a NSF CAREER award, the Electrochemical Society (ECS) Energy Technology Division Research Award, the Industry Project Award from the Institution of Chemical Engineers, and the ECS Carl Wagner Memorial Award. He is a Fellow of the ECS and of the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE). He is a coauthor of reports on the prospects of CO2 utilization at scale issued by the US National Academies, the Royal Society, and the global Mission Innovation consortium. He is the technical editor for Electrochemical Engineering for the Journal of the Electrochemical Society, the Chair of the Industrial Electrochemistry & Electrochemical Engineering (IE&EE) Division, and he serves on the ECS finance committee. 

Hosted by: Chibueze Amanchukwu, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Molecular Engineering in the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering