2024-2025 Seed Fund Recipients

Dr. Steve R. Nutt
M.C. Gill Chair in Composite Materials and professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

Dr. Jay H. Lee
Choong Hoon Cho Chair and Professor of Chemical and materials Science, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering. Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Industrial and Systems Engineering

Dr. Rajiv Kalia
Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Computer Science, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, and Biomedical Engineering

Dr. Luis Francisco Villalobos
Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

Dr. Yan Liu
Professor, Computer Science Department

Dr. Behnam Jafarpour
N.I.O.C. Fellow and Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Dr. Kandis Leslie Abdul-Aziz
WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Seed funding provided by E-CET (2023-2024):

Dr. Fokion Egolfopoulos
Transient Plasma-Enhanced Combustion of Hydrogen for Increased Efficiency and Reduced Emissions

Dr. Stephen Cronin
Transient Plasma-Enhanced Combustion of Hydrogen for Increased Efficiency and Reduced Emissions

Dr. Zhenglu Li
Renewable Energy Evolution: Managing Legacy Assets and Pioneering New Solutions for Optimal Efficiency and Sustainability with Computational Inspirations

Dr. Aiichiro Nakano
AI-Driven Design of Functional Materials for Hydrogen Production and Storage

Dr. Brent Melot
Transition Metal Phyllosilicates for the Gas Phase Hydrogenation of CO2 to Methanol
Seed funding provided by E-CET (2022-2023):

Dr. Viktor Prasanna
Towards Real-Time Storage Integrated Operations of the Smart Grid

Dr. Priya Vashishta
Green Energy Learning from the Force of Nature

Dr. Kelly Sanders
Developing Quantitative Frameworks to Assess the Emissions Tradeoffs of Changes in demand in High Renewable Energy Power Grids

Dr. Birendra Jha
Modeling Carbon Storage in Petroleum Reservoirs and Aquifers
Seed funding provided by Chevron:

Dr. Theo Tsotsis
Layer Double Hydroxide Inorganic Membranes: A Novel Enabling Material for Direct Air Capture (DAC) Reactive Separation Applications

Dr. Kristian Jessen and Dr. Theo Tsostsis
A Membrane Contactor Based Process for Fuel Alcohol Production for Distributed-Type Applications

Dr. Shaama Sharada
In Silico Catalyst Design Rules for Efficient Gas-to-liquid Conversion
Faculty supported by Cy Pres

Dr. Jayakanth Ravichandran
Development of Abundant, Inexpensive Catalysts for Hydrogen Production

Dr. Paulo Sergio Branicio
3d Bicontinuous Nano Porous Graphene Based CO2 Capture

Dr. Young Cho
Portable long-range wireless Internet for GHG Monitoring

Dr. Bora Genturk
Development of Near zero permeability cement composite for well-plugging applications