Prof. Jingguang Chen is the Thayer Lindsley Professor of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University, with a joint appointment at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He received his B.S. degree from Nanjing University and his PhD degree from the University of Pittsburgh. After finishing an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellowship in Germany, he joined the Exxon Corporate Research Laboratory for several years. He started his academic career at the University of Delaware and rose to the rank of the Claire LeClaire Professor of Chemical Engineering and the Director of the Center for Catalytic Science and Technology. He is the co-author of over 500 journal publications and over 20 United States patents. His research interests include fundamental understanding of carbides, nitrides and bimetallic catalysts for applications in thermocatalysis and electrocatalysis. His research group utilizes a combination of experimental studies, in-situ characterization and density functional theory calculations.

He served in many leadership positions, including the Chair of the Catalysis Division of the American Chemical Society, the President of the North American Catalysis Society, and the Chair of Gordon Research Conference on Catalysis. He was a co-founder and the director of the Synchrotron Catalysis Consortium, which was established in 2025 with support from the Department of Energy to assist catalysis researchers to utilize synchrotron techniques. He is an Executive Editor of ACS Catalysis and has been on the editorial advisory boards of many journals. He received the George Olah Award on Hydrocarbon Chemistry from the American Chemical Society, the Robert Wilhelm Award on Chemical Reaction Engineering from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and the Robert Burwell Lectureship from the North American Catalysis Society. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

It is our great pleasure to welcome Prof. Jingguang Chen to PodCAT for our 50th episode!

Prof. Carlos Morales-Guio is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UCLA. His group develops reactor-centric methods that decouple transport from intrinsic kinetics and translate insights to scalable, model-informed electrolyzer designs. Carlos received his B. Eng. degree in Chemical Engineering from Osaka University and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Before joining UCLA in the fall of 2018, Carlos was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. Carlos is a recipient of the Swiss National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) Award 2017, a Scialog Fellowship on Negative Emission Sciences, the NSF CAREER Award, and is a Resnick Young Investigator. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Morales-Guio on PodCAT!

Prof. Linsey Seitz is an Associate Professor in the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department at Northwestern University. She received her B.S. (2010) in Chemical Engineering from Michigan State University, supported with a full ride scholarship. She earned her M.S. (2013) and Ph.D. (2015) in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University supported as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow and later as a Stanford DARE Fellow. Linsey completed postdoctoral research at the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology with the Institute of Photon Science and Synchrotron Radiation, supported by a Helmholtz Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her research uses tools at the interface of electrocatalysis and spectroscopy to investigate dynamic catalyst materials and reaction environments towards the sustainable production of fuels and chemicals, as well as upconversion of waste streams. Linsey was recently honored with the ACS Catalysis Early Career Award (2024) and has been recognized as a "Pioneer of the Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division" of AIChE (2021). She has also received an NSF Career Award (2022), an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2025), and a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2025). It is our great pleasure to welcome Prof. Seitz to PodCAT!

Prof. Marcel Schreier received his B.S. degree in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering from EPFL and his M.S. degree in Chemical and Bioengineering from ETH Zurich. During his studies, Schreier worked on Li-Ion Batteries at BASF and investigated Fischer-Tropsch refining mechanisms at the University of Alberta. His master's research was performed in the laboratory of Sossina Haile at Caltech, where he designed materials for fuel cell electrodes. He subsequently joined the laboratory of Michael Grätzel at EPFL, where he developed electrocatalysts and devices for the sunlight-driven conversion of CO2 to fuels. Following his passion for fundamental electrochemistry, he moved to MIT, where he worked with Yogesh Surendranath as an SNSF Postdoctoral Fellow. He subsequently joined the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as the Richard H. Soit Assistant Professor. He is also an affiliate faculty member of the Department of Chemistry.

Together with his research group, Prof. Schreier works to understand how the structure of the electrochemical interface and the surface chemistry of catalytic materials influence the fundamental mechanisms which drive chemical transformations using electrical energy. While working at the University of Wisconsin, he has received the Beckman Young Investigator Award, a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, and an NSF CAREER Award. He has been named a Scialog fellow, a Kavli Fellow (National Academy of Science) and has participated in several Frontiers of Engineering meetings of the National Academy of Engineering. Apart from electrochemistry, Prof. Schreier is passionate about modern art, energy systems, technologies of all kinds and policy. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Marcel Schreier to PodCAT!

Prof. Ariel L. Furst is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. Her lab combines biological, chemical, and materials engineering to solve challenges in human health and environmental sustainability. They develop technologies for implementation in low-resource settings to ensure equitable access to technology. She completed her Ph.D. in the lab of Prof. Jacqueline K. Barton at the California Institute of Technology developing new cancer diagnostic strategies based on DNA charge transport. She was an A. O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow in the lab of Prof. Matthew Francis at UC, Berkeley developing sensors to monitor environmental pollutants. She is the recipient of the NIH New Innovator Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and the Sloan Fellowship. She is the cofounder of three startups and is passionate about entrepreneurship, in addition to STEM outreach and increasing participation of underrepresented groups in engineering. It is our pleasure to host Prof. Furst on PodCAT!

David Flaherty is the Thomas C. DeLoach Jr. Endowed Professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Prof. Flaherty completed a BS in Chemical Engineering at UC-Berkeley and completed his PhD at University of Texas Austin at the interface between chemical engineering and physical chemistry studying thin film deposition and chemical reactions at surfaces with Prof. C Buddie Mullins. During this time, he was also a visiting student at Pacific Northwestern National Laboratory with the surface chemistry team.

Flahrety was subsequently a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley with Prof Enrique Iglesia examining hydrogenolysis reactions of alkanes over supported metal transition metal nanoparticles.

At his current position at Georgia Tech, he leads a group that develops understanding and design principles for the use of solid catalysts to resolve challenges for the sustainable production of chemicals and energy carriers. Research focuses on generating new insight into chemical phenomena that emerge when reactions occur on complex and dynamic catalyst, often solid-liquid interfaces.

Flaherty has been recognized with numerous awards including the Department of Energy Early Career Award; National Science Foundation CAREER Award; the American Vacuum Society, Early Career Research Award; the Eastman Foundation Distinguished Lecturer in Catalysis; and the Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis from the North American Catalysis Society. He also currently serves as Editor-in-Chief for Journal of Catalysis. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. David Flaherty to PodCAT!

Originally from Egypt, Prof. Omar Abdelrahman grew up in the United Arab Emirates, where he developed his passion for chemical engineering and went on to receive his BSc in Chemical Engineering (American University of Sharjah, 2011). Driven by the desire to be involved in scientific research, Omar moved to upstate NY for his PhD in chemical engineering at Syracuse University (2016), followed by a postdoctoral position at the University of Minnesota. In 2018, Omar joined the University of Massachusetts Amherst as an assistant professor and is now an associate professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Houston.

The Abdelrahman lab is focused on heterogeneous catalysis and reaction engineering, with an emphasis on understanding and controlling non-ideal thermodynamic environments for selective chemical transformations. Omar is a team leader for the center for programmable energy catalysis (CPEC), a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center, where efforts in his team target the programmable control of active site electronic charge distribution. The group is also committed to advancing accessible and affordable science, through developing and disseminating experimental designs aimed at lowering the barrier to entry into catalysis research. When he gets a chance to spend time in the lab, Omar loves nothing more than tinkering alongside his students to come up with new and fun reactor designs. Outside the lab, Omar enjoys exploring the city of Houston on bike, a fan of everything food & drink, and travelling for that next outdoor adventure. It is our great pleasure to welcome Omar to PodCAT!

Prof. Rajamani (Raj) Gounder received his BS in Chemical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin in 2006, where his interest in catalysis was sparked while performing research under Jim Dumesic. He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from UC-Berkeley in 2011 under the guidance of Enrique Iglesia, and then completed a postdoctoral stay at Caltech with Mark Davis. He started his faculty career at Purdue in 2013, and is currently the R. Norris and Eleanor Shreve Professor in Chemical Engineering and the Director of the Purdue Catalysis Center.

Raj's research group studies the kinetic and mechanistic details of catalytic reactions, the design of zeolites and porous materials with tailored site and surface properties, and the development of methods to characterize and titrate active sites in catalytic surfaces. His research group has been recognized by the PECASE award, the Sloan Research Fellowship, the Early Career in Catalysis Award from the ACS CATL Division, and the Rutherford Aris Award from ISCRE.

Raj has also served as president and director of the Catalysis Club of Chicago, and co-organized technical programs for the North American Catalysis Society Meeting and the AIChE CRE Division.