Group Photos
Miguel A. Modestino
Miguel A. Modestino is the Director of the Sustainable Engineering Initiative and the Donald F. Othmer Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at New York University (NYU). Miguel obtained his B.S in Chemical Engineering (2007) and M.S. in Chemical Engineering Practice (2008) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley (2013). From 2013-2016, he was a post-doctoral researcher at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He is a winner of the Global Change Award from the H&M Foundation (2016), the MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35 Award in Latin America (2017) and Globally (2020), the ACS Petroleum Research Fund Doctoral New Investigator Award (2018), the NSF CAREER Award (2019), the Inaugural NYU Tandon Junior Faculty Research Award (2020), and TED Idea Search Latin America (2021).
Post-Docs
Raisa Carmen A. Ela
Raisa is a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. She obtained her B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering (2017,2018) from the University of New Mexico, and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering (2020) from Michigan Technological University. Raisa completed a Postdoctoral Associate position in the Department of BioProducts and BioSystems Engineering at the University of Minnesota in January 2024. Prior to this, she held a Postdoctoral Associate Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for Sustainable Polymers (CSP) in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota (2021-2023). She works on advanced characterization techniques to optimize the performance of heterogeneous catalysts used in environmental remediation and carbon-neutral fuel synthesis applications.
Darjan Podbevšek
Darjan is a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He obtained his B.S. and M.S. in Power and Process Engineering at the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia). His Ph.D. in Physics was conducted at the Institut of Light and Matter at University Claude Bernard Lyon (France). In 2019 he joined prof. Dular’s team at the University of Ljubljana, as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. In 2021 he joined prof. Chen and prof. Tu group in 2021 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Advanced Science Research Center in New York. He works on studying the influence of bubbles on alkaline water electrolyzer efficiency for hydrogen fuel production.
PhD Students
Ricardo Mathison
Ricardo is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He obtained his B.S. in Chemical Engineering (2020) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is currently developing methods to understand multiscale transport and kinetic phenomena in organic electrosynthesis.
Casey Bloomquist
Casey is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He obtained his M.Sc. in Physics from the University of British Columbia (2012) and his B.S. in Physics and Math from Hamilton College (2010). He is currently studying plasma-enhanced electrochemical reactions.
Mihyun Kim
Mihyun is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. She obtained her M.S. in Chemical Engineering/ Data Science and B.S. in Chemical Engineering - Nanomolecular Engineering from the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. During her undergraduate years, she established a popular restaurant, Topoki Pocha, in Federal Way, WA. With a genuine interest in entrepreneurship and sustainable engineering, she is working on analytical research to develop a predictive model for ion-conducting membrane conductivity using machine learning for membranes used in electrochemical reactors to bring solutions to fundamental electrochemical engineering problems.
Luana de Brito Anton
Luana is a Ph.D. student in the department of Urban and Civil Engineering. She obtained her M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Montpellier (ENSCM), France, and her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Universidade Federal do Amazonas (UFAM), Brazil. She is currently studying the mechanistic understanding of photodegradation of pesticides in the environment for predictive modeling.
Canying Wang
Canying is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. She obtained her B.S in Chemical Engineering (2023) from Cooper Union. She is currently working in a collaborative research project in identifying optimal operation conditions and developing computational model for a single-step production of paraffin-based fuels from carbon dioxide and hydrogen.
Dania Orfali
Dania is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. She obtained her M.S. in Biological and Chemical Engineering (2023) from a joint European Master's program from AgroParisTech in France and a B.E. in Chemical Engineering (2021) from the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. She is currently working on developing automated real-time self-optimizing pulsed electrolyzers with a focus on carbon dioxide electroreduction.
César Arana
César is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He obtained his B.S. in Chemical Engineering (2024) from Universidad Metropolitana in Venezuela. His research focuses on the decarbonization of steel production using high-temperature plasma electrochemistry.
Master's Students
Meera Patel
Meera is a Master's student in the department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. She obtained her B.S. in Chemical Engineering (2024) at Tandon School of Engineering.
Daniel Naumov
Daniel is a Master's student in the department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. He obtained her B.S. in Chemical Engineering (2024) at Tandon School of Engineering.
B.S. Students
Group Alumni
Post-Docs
PhD Students
Toshihiro Akashige
Laboratory & Safety Manager at HAX
Master's Students
Xinshu Shang
Undergraduate Students
James Harris
Jiahua Pei
Kaylee Dunnigan
Visiting/Summer Students
Andrew Hamlin (2018)
