PodCAT

Prof. John Kitchin completed his B.S. in Chemistry at North Carolina State University. He completed a M.S. in Materials Science and a PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware in 2004 under the advisement of Dr. Jingguang Chen and Dr. Mark Barteau. He received an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellowship and lived in Berlin, Germany for 1 ½ years studying alloy segregation with Karsten Reuter and Matthias Scheffler in the Theory Department at the Fritz Haber Institut. Professor Kitchin began a tenure-track faculty position in the Chemical Engineering Department at Carnegie Mellon University in January of 2006. He is currently the John E. Swearingen Professor. At CMU, Professor Kitchin works in the areas of alloy catalysis and molecular simulation. He was awarded a DOE Early Career award in 2010 to investigate multifunctional oxide electrocatalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction in water splitting using experimental and computational methods. He received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2011. He completed a sabbatical in the Accelerated Science group at Google learning to apply machine learning to scientific and engineering problems in 2018. He was awarded the AICHE Award for Innovation in Chemical Engineering Education in 2023 for his work in promoting Python in Science and Engineering education. It is our great pleasure to welcome Prof. Kitchin to PodCAT!

Prof. Ya-Huei (Cathy) Chin is Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Advanced Catalysis for Sustainable Chemistry at the University of Toronto. She joined the University in 2011, after receiving her Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Before then, she was a research engineer (2000-2002) and then senior research scientist (2002-2005) at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), one of the ten National Research Laboratories for the U.S. Department of Energy. Her recent research focuses on establishing mechanistic linkages between catalytic events and different reaction microenvironments for the sustainable synthesis of fuels and chemicals. In particular, she is interested in the dynamics of catalyst surfaces and catalytic pathways at vapor–solid and liquid–solid interfaces, as well as in bridging thermocatalysis and electrocatalysis. She serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Catalysis and as an advisory board member for several leading journals in the field, including Applied Catalysis B: Environmental, Reaction Chemistry and Engineering, Chem Catalysis, and the Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering. Within the ACS Catalysis Division, she has served as a Member-at-Large and as an Alternate Councilor and Councilor, and has contributed to the organization of the Division's Educational Seminar Series. Her service to the catalysis community extends nationally and internationally. For the Canadian Catalysis Society, she has served as President, Vice-President, and Treasurer. She currently serves as Director-at-Large of the North American Catalysis Society and the Humboldt Association of Canada, and as Secretary of the International Association of Catalysis Societies (IACS). She is also Co-Chair of the 30th North American Catalysis Society Meeting (2027). Across these roles, her goal is to foster a diverse, strong, and vibrant catalysis community—one that connects researchers across disciplines and generations, without borders, in the shared pursuit of science. When she is not choreographing molecular dances, breaking bonds, or crossing transition states, she is dancing ballet herself. It is our great pleasure to welcome Prof. Cathy Chin to PodCAT!  

Dr. Javier Guzman is the Executive Vice President for Research at the Tecnológico de Monterrey Education Group in Mexico. He oversees the research enterprise for three university systems (Tecnologico de Monterrey (ranked #1 in Mexico and #4 in Latin America), TecSalud (academic and research hospital system), and TecMilenio (stackable and flexible competency-based education model)). Before joining Tecnológico de Monterrey in July 2025, he worked in a variety of technical and leadership roles in the private sector and academia in the U.S. for more than two decades. Most recently, he was the senior technology advisor at Corporate Strategy and Planning at ExxonMobil. He also serves the academic community in leadership roles such as the President of the North American Catalysis Society, Advisor to the U.S. Department of Energy in the Basic Energy Science Advisory Board, and as an advisor to many research centers around the world. It is our great pleasure to welcome Dr. Javier Guzman to PodCAT!

Prof. Juliana Carneiro is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University, where she leads the Carneiro Research Group. Her research examines how catalyst structure and interfacial chemistry govern heterogeneous catalytic and electrochemical reactions, with the goal of developing more efficient and resilient technologies for sustainable chemical production and energy conversion. Her group combines materials synthesis, advanced characterization, electrochemical measurements, and spectroscopy to study reactions involving carbon dioxide, water, methane, nitrogen, and other environmentally important molecules. Prof. Carneiro earned her B.S. in Environmental Engineering from Universidade Tiradentes in Brazil and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Wayne State University, where she worked with Prof. Eranda Nikolla. She subsequently completed postdoctoral research at the Georgia Institute of Technology with Prof. Christopher W. Jones before joining Columbia in 2023. She has been named a Scialog Fellow in both Negative Emissions Science and Sustainable Minerals, Metals, and Materials. She currently serves as Chair of the Catalysis Society of Metropolitan New York and on the early-career editorial boards of Energy & Fuels and Applied Catalysis A: General. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Carniero to PodCAT!

Raffaella is a Full Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and Head of the Laboratory of Nanochemistry for Energy (LNCE) at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). She leads a multidisciplinary research program in which the synthesis of well-defined and tunable catalytic materials enables a fundamental understanding of catalytic phenomena and guides the development of design principles for selective and stable electrocatalysts. She received her Laurea in Chemistry from the University of Bari in 2005 and earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Lecce in 2010. She subsequently spent 6 years in US. She joined the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL)  first as a postdoctoral researcher from 2010 to 2012 and then as a project scientist from 2012 to 2013. From 2013 to 2015, she was a tenure-track staff scientist at LBNL where she started her own research program within the Joint Center of Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP), In 2015, she joined EPFL as a tenure-track Assistant Professor. Raffaella's research has been recognized with several awards, including the Swiss Chemical Society Werner Prize (2021), the Eastman Lecture in Catalysis at the University of California, Berkeley (2023), the Russel Lecture at Queen's University, Canada (2024), and the ACS Inorganic Nanoscience Award (2024). She also serves as an Associate Editor of ACS Catalysis since 2021. It is our pleasure to welcome Raffaella to PodCAT!

We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Cathleen Crudden back to PodCAT for our 60th episode! Dr. Crudden is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Queen's, and the Founder and Scientific Director of the Carbon to Metal Coating Institute (C2MCI). She is a Research Professor in Nagoya, Japan, where she runs a satellite lab. Crudden has secured over $72M in research grants over her career, including a 2021 $24M New Frontiers Research Fund – Transformation (NFRF-T) grant, which forms the basis of the C2MCI. Crudden's accomplishments include Fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada, Fellowship in the American Chemical Society, the Chemical Institute of Canada, the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), and the CNRS (France). She is an elected international fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science (AAAS). Crudden has won numerous awards for her work, including the Arthur C. Cope Scholar (American Chemical Society), the NSERC 2023 Polanyi Award, and the Alfred Bader award. In recognition of her impact on the field, the Canadian Journal of Chemistry dedicated a special issue to her scientific achievements, led by former trainees. She was also awarded the Montreal Medal of the Chemical Instiute of Canada, the highest award for service. She has served as the Chair of the Fellowship committee for the Royal Society of Canada (Mathematical and Physical Sciences) and has been a panel member for Sloan Research Fellowships, and currently chairs the Cope Scholar/Cope Prize committee. She is Editor-in-chief of ACS Catalysis, the premier journal for publication of research in the catalysis sciences.

Karthish Manthiram is the Bren Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, and the Exeuctive Officer for Chemical Engineering at Caltech. The Manthiram Lab is focused on the development of electrified catalysts for the sustainable synthesis of molecules that go into constructing the physical world, including plastics and fertilizers, using renewable feedstocks. Karthish received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University in 2010 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley in 2015 with Prof. Paul Alivisatos. After a one-year postdoc at the California Institute of Technology with Prof. Robert H. Grubbs, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an Assistant Professor in 2017. In 2021, he moved to Caltech as a Full Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry. In 2022, he was named the Director of the Solar Science and Catalysis Center in the Resnick Sustainability Institute. In 2025, he was named the Bren Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry and started as Chair for Chemical Engineering. Karthish's research and teaching has been recognized with several awards, including the Moore Inventor Fellowship, DOE Early Career Award, NSF CAREER Award, Sloan Research Fellowship, Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science, Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, Infosys Prize, MIT Chemical Engineering Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, and MIT Teaching with Digital Technology Award. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Manthiram to PodCAT!

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!

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!

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!