PodCAT

Marc Porosoff, Ezra Clark, and Tom Senftle

One stop shop for academic heterogeneous catalysis. Guidance through the faculty application package and early career stages.

  1. 4d ago

    Prof. Michael Wong

    Prof. Michael S. Wong, Ph.D, is the Tina and Sunit Patel Chair in Molecular Nanotechnology and professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Rice University. He is also professor in the Departments of Chemistry, of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and of Materials Science and Nano Engineering. He received his education and training at Caltech, MIT, and UCSB. He is Research Thrust Leader in the Rice WaTER Institute and Director of the Rice PFAS Abatement and Replacement Center (Rice PAR). His research program tackles water, sustainability, and energy issues through chemical engineering, materials chemistry, and heterogeneous catalysis approaches. He develops thermal/photo/electro-catalysis technologies to de-construct molecules, i.e., treat water of undesirable contaminants like drycleaning and industrial solvents, fertilizer runoff, and PFAS. His Catalysis and Nanomaterials Laboratory has generated over 220 publications, cited cumulatively over 20,000 times (h-index > 75).  He received the 2023 AIChE Lawrence K. Cecil Award, the highest environmental honor in chemical engineering, the International Precious Metals Institute's 2025 Henry J. Albert Award for pioneering precious metal catalysis for clean water applications, and the 2025 AIChE NSEF Award, the highest nanotechnology honor in chemical engineering. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the American Chemical Society (ACS), and the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). He serves on the ACS Society Committee on Publications, and as an executive editor for the ACS journal Environmental Science and Technology. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Wong to PodCAT!

  2. Jun 26

    Prof. Steven Chavez

    Prof. Steven Chavez is an Assistant Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UCLA. His long-term career goal is to develop tools and model systems to advance mechanistic understanding of dynamics in heterogenous catalysis. Prior to UCLA, he was previously an Arnold O. Beckman postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University.  Prior to Stanford, he received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan as a NSF Graduate Research Fellow, a Ford Foundation Fellow, a Rackham Merit Fellow, and a Rackham Predoctoral Fellow.  Outside of research, he is a strong advocate for increasing diversity in STEM. He has 14+ years of experience conceiving, planning, and executing programs/events to improve the recruitment and retention of first-generation, low-income students in STEM fields. At UCLA, Steven works with the Chicano Studies Research Center to implement and evaluate programs to help UCLA reach its goal of becoming a Hispanic Serving Institution. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Chavez to PodCAT!

  3. Jun 15

    Prof. Christopher Jones

    Professor Christopher W. Jones is the John F. Brock III School Chair and Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. Dr. Jones leads a research group that works on materials, catalysis and adsorption.  In catalysis, he has worked at the interface of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, with recent work focusing on thermal heterogeneous catalysis.  Dr. Jones was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal, ACS Catalysis, and served 8 years as Vice-President of the North American Catalysis Society.  Today he is Editor-in-Chief the open access, multidisciplinary journal, JACS Au. Jones is also known for his work on materials that extract CO2 from ultra-dilute mixtures such as ambient air, which are key components of direct air capture (DAC) technologies.  He currently serves as President of the International Adsorption Society. Jones' work in both catalysis and CO2 separation has been recognized with awards from various organizations including the ACS, ASEE, AIChE and NACS. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Jones to PodCAT!

  4. Mar 30

    Prof. Lars Grabow

    Prof. Lars Grabow is the Dan Luss Professor in the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Houston. He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin in 2008, followed by postdoctoral appointments at the Technical University of Denmark and Stanford University. His expertise is the application of electronic structure calculations, kinetic modeling, data science and transient kinetic characterization to problems in heterogeneous and electro-catalysis, surface science, and energy transition.  Prof. Grabow received the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Early Career Award (2014), and the NSF CAREER Award (2015), among others. At the University of Houston, he was recognized with the Undergraduate Research Mentoring Award and was selected as "Pathway Professor" teaching courses with high DWIF rates. Notable prior service roles include Chair of the Southwest Catalysis Society (SWCS) and the Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division of AIChE. Currently, he serves as NACS representative for SWCS and Alternate Councilor for the ACS CATL Division. He is also Editor-in-Chief of ChemistryEurope, after previously serving as Editor of Surface Science. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Grabow to PodCAT!

  5. Mar 20

    Prof. Brandon Bukowski

    Prof. Brandon Bukowski is an Assistant Professor in the department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. He holds BS and PhD degrees in Chemical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Purdue University, respectively. At Purdue he was advised by Jeffrey Greeley where he modeled the kinetics of zeolite and supported nanoparticle catalysts using Density Functional Theory and Molecular Dynamics. He performed post-doctoral research at Northwestern University under the supervision of Randall Snurr studying diffusion in nanoporous materials including metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and porous polymers. Bukowski started at Johns Hopkins University in July of 2021. He has received a DOE BES Early Career Research Award, an Amazon Research Award, a Doctoral New Investigator grant from the ACS Petroleum Research Fund, a Ralph E. Powe award from Oak Ridge Associated Universities, and a Hopkins Catalyst Award. He is the program chair for the AIChE catalysis and reaction engineering division and program chair of the Northeast Corridor Zeolite Association. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Bukowski to PodCAT!

  6. Mar 13

    Prof. Madelyn Ball

    Prof. Madelyn Ball is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at Michigan State University. Prof. Ball received her B.S. from University of New Hampshire and Ph.D in Chemical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin Madison under James Dumesic before conducting postdoctoral studies under Prof. Christopher Jones at Georgia Tech. Prof. Ball's research interests are in heterogeneous catalysis, focusing on design of well-controlled nanoparticle materials for CO2 and natural gas conversion reactions to facilitate sustainable chemical production. Her group uses catalysis and synthetic materials chemistry, operando spectroscopic techniques and well-controlled catalyst synthesis methods to elucidate active site structures under reactive environments for designing and developing improved catalysts. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Ball to PodCAT!

  7. Mar 6

    Prof. Christopher Paolucci

    Prof. Christopher Paolucci is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Virginia. He is a "Double Domer" having completed his B.S. and Ph.D in Chemical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. Afterwards, he was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University. The Paolucci group focuses on computer simulations of chemical reactions at interfaces.  Research areas include computational catalysis (understanding how current catalysts accelerate chemical reactions at the molecular level, and predicting the performance of potential new ones), and modeling of material synthesis and deactivation for both catalysts and other solid materials.  The group uses existing quantum and classical simulation methods and also develops new hybrid methods that bridge micro and macroscopic length scales through the use of techniques such as machine learning and Monte Carlo simulation.  For this work, he has received numerous awards and honors, including the NSF CAREER award and the invitation to present as an Early Career Investigator at the 2024 Gordon Research Conference on Catalysis. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Paolucci on PodCAT!

  8. Feb 27

    Prof. Tibor Szilvási

    Prof. Tibor Szilvási ( seal-vase-she) studied chemical engineering, chemistry, and physics at the Budapest University of Technology, Hungary, where he completed his PhD degree in 2016. After a postdoctoral stay at the University of Wisconsin–Madison with Prof. Manos Mavrikakis he joined the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at The University of Alabama as a tenure-track assistant professor in 2020. Prof. Szilvási's research group focuses on computational catalysis and materials design and has published over 140 peer-reviewed publications. Tibor's research group is funded by the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Department of Education, Department of Defense, the Krell Institute, and NVIDIA. Tibor has received numerous awards including NSF CAREER Award, and Outstanding Junior Faculty Award from the Computers in Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society. Most recently, Tibor was announced as the 2026 recipient of the Early Career in Catalysis Award of the Catalysis Science & Technology division of the American Chemical Society. Tibor also serves as the Graduate Program Coordinator of his Department, Early Career Board Member of Journal of Catalysis, President of the Southeastern Catalysis Society, and Programming Chair of the Catalysis & Reaction Engineering division of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Szilvasi to PodCAT!

See All (58)

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
20 Ratings

About

One stop shop for academic heterogeneous catalysis. Guidance through the faculty application package and early career stages.

Information

  • Creator
    Marc Porosoff, Ezra Clark, and Tom Senftle
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    58
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2022
  • Show Website
    PodCAT

You Might Also Like