Team - Modestino Group

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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).
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Post-Docs

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.
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PhD Students

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.
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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.
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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.
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Simone Sullivan
Simone is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. She obtained her B.S. in Chemical Engineering (2025) from Northwestern University. She is currently studying plasma-enhanced electrochemical reactions.
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Sebastian Castro
Sebastian is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He is from Tampa, FL, and he earned his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Florida State University in Spring 2025. His research includes both computational and experimental components, focusing on modeling, understanding, and optimizing electrochemical processes and materials to improve energy sustainability.
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Maya Schuchert
Maya is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. She obtained her B.S. in Chemical Engineering (2024) from Columbia University. She is currently working on a collaborative research project developing automated electrolyzers for the simultaneous optimization of electrochemical process conditions and parameterization of coupled transport-kinetic models.
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