Shifting our dependence from fossil fuels does not only require clean ways to produce energy but also alternative pathway for the sustainable production of chemicals. Electrochemistry can help us in this direction, enabling the formation of value-added product from cheap and abundant feedstock, including waste, via emerging electrochemical reactions.
This symposium invites contributions from cutting-edge and challenging electrocatalytic reactions, aimed at decarbonizing energy, fuels or chemicals productions. The focus will span from catalyst design to mechanistic and theoretical studies, applied to emerging reactions. The reactions covered will include but will not be limited to ammonia synthesis, nitrate reduction, biomass electro-oxidation and C-N coupling.
- Electrochemical partial oxidation of small molecules
- Electrosynthesis
- Electrochemical C-N coupling
- Electrochemical nitrogen reduction
- Electrochemical nitrate reduction
Silvia Favero is a Marie-Curie fellow, currently working on electrochemical methane oxidation, in the group of Prof. María Escudero at ICN2.
She obtained her PhD from Imperial College London in 2024, under the co-supervision of Prof. Magda Titirici and Prof. Ifan Stephens. She then did a postdoc in the same group, and a research exchange in the group of Prof. Katayama, at the Osaka University, and Prof. Koper, at the Leiden university.
Her research to date has focused on mechanistic studies of electrochemical reactions, using in-situ and operando techniques, especially surface enhanced infrared spectroscopy.
Dr Hui Luo is an independent academic fellow in the School of Mechanical Engineering Sciences at the University of Surrey, UK. She is also a Fellow of the Institute for Sustainability, member of the Royal Society of Chemistry (MRSC) and member of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (MIMMM).
Dr. Luo obtained her PhD in Queen Mary University of London in 2019, working on carbon materials for solar hydrogen conversion. in Oct 2019 she moved to Imperial College London working as a research associate, developing biomass electrolyser for green hydrogen and bio-chemical co-production. In Sep 2022 she worked as a senior test engineering at Ceres, before taking the Surrey Future Fellowship and join Surrey in May 2023.
Her research interests include developing and up-scaling efficient electrolysis technologies to convert biomass and plastic wastes into green hydrogen and high-value commodity chemicals. Her expertise includes nanomaterials synthesis and characterisation, water electrolysis and fuel cell technologies, in operando Synchrotron X-ray absorption, surface enhanced Raman and FTIR spectroscopy, as well as gas and liquid chromatography.
I'm an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London (ICL). My principal interests and expertise are in the science and engineering of electrochemical energy conversion, CO2 reduction, and separation processes for industrial effluent treatment and material recycling. After obtaining my MSci degree in Physics at ICL in 2007, I moved to the Department of Chemical Engineering to carry out PhD studies in electrochemical wastewater treatment through heavy metal recovery. I subsequently conducted multiple postdoctoral research projects in the same department, including in photoelectrochemical solar fuel production, waste management by electrochemical treatment of waste streams and valorisation of CO2 via conversion into fuels. Academic research projects in my group are aimed at solving industrial problems through both experimental and numerical modelling investigations.
Feng JiaoI am currently a Full Professor at the University of Bonn, Institute of Inorganic Chemistry and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Montreal, Department of Chemistry. My team's overarching motivation is to discover and implement the chemistry necessary to transition to a sustainable energy-based society. Specifically, we are developing materials geared to convert renewable electricity to chemical fuels as an energy storage media.
Shaofeng Li is professor at University of Science and Technology of China since 2024. He obtained his PhD degree at Dalian University of Technology in 2020, and has been a visiting PhD student in Stanford University during 2018-2020. He did postdoctoral research in Stanford University from 2020 to 2021, and then join Technical University of Denmark as a postdoctoral researcher from 2021 to 2024. His research focuses on advancing electrosynthesis technologies and developing visualization techniques for energy storage and conversion systems. He has published 79 co-authored papers with h-index of 47 and citation >9600, including 20 first/co-first/corresponding author papers in Nature, Nat. Energy, Nat. Rev. Chem., Joule, J. Am. Chem. Soc., Adv. Mater., Energy Environ. Sci. etc. He served as Early Career Editorial Board Member for journals, including eScience, J. Energy. Chem., Exploration, and served as reviewers for journals, including Nat. Energy, Nat. Synth., JACS, Joule, ACS Cat., Adv. Mater..
Pablo S. Fernández received his B.Sc (2006) and Ph.D. (2011) in the Research Institute of Theoretical and Applied Physical Chemistry (INIFTA) at the University of La Plata, La Plata, Argentina under the supervision of Profa. Maria E. Martins. During 2012-2014 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the same institution. In 2014 he joined the Electrochemistry Group at the Chemistry Institute of São Carlos, USP, where he worked as a Postdoc with Prof. Germano Tremiliosi-Filho until August of the same year when he was appointed Assistant Professor at the Chemistry Institute of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP). Between 2010 and 2013 he visited the group of Prof. Giuseppe Câmara (UFMS-MS) where he worked intensively with FTIR in situ. From 07/2015 to 03/2016 he joined the Catalysis and Surface Chemistry Group, at the University of Leiden (The Netherlands) working under the supervision of Prof. M.T.M. Koper. He is currently an Associate Professor at Unicamp, head of the Campinas Electrochemistry Group (CampEG) and an active member at the Center for Innovation on New Energies (CINE). He was the Director of the Physical Chemistry Division of SBQ (Brazilian Chemical Society, 2020-2022). Since 2020 is the Brazilian representative of the SIBAE (Ibero-American Society of Electrochemistry). His research focuses on fundamental aspects of electrochemistry and electrocatalysis with an emphasis on the use and development of in situ characterization tools.
Ifan is a Professor in Electrochemistry at the Department of Materials at Imperial College: he leads the Interfacial Electrochemistry Group there and is also Atoms to Devices Research Area Lead at the Henry Royce Institute.
Ifan joined Imperial College in July 2017. Prior to Imperial, he was at the Department of Physics at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU); he was first employed as a postdoctoral researcher, then as assistant professor and finally as associate professor and leader of the Electrocatalysis Group there. In 2015, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) appointed Ifan as the Peabody Visiting Associate Professor. He taught and conducted research at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT for a whole semester.
Ifan’s research aims to enable the large-scale electrochemical conversion of renewable energy to fuels and valuable chemicals and vice versa. Such processes will be critical in order to allow the increased uptake of renewable energy. His focus is on the catalyst at the electrode, i.e. the electrocatalyst. It turns out that the electrocatalyst material defines the efficiency of several important electrochemical processes, including:(i) electrolysis for the storage of renewable electricity — which is inherently intermittent — in the form of fuels, such as hydrogen or alcohols.(ii) fuel cells as a potentially zero emission source of power for automotive vehicles. (iii) the green synthesis of valuable chemicals, such as ammonia and H2O2. (iv) batteries, which tend to degrade by gas evolution at the electrode-electrolyte interface. Hence the reactions that need to be accelerated in electrolysers and fuel cells — such as CO2, CO, O2 and H2 evolution — are precisely those that need to be inhibited in batteries.
Ifan has discovered or co-discovered several new catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction, which exhibited significant improvements in performance over the prior state-of-the-art. In particular, his research on hydrogen peroxide production led to the establishment of the spinout company, HP Now.
Ifan is the recipient of RSC's Geoffrey Barker Medal (2024), the RSC's John Jeyes Award (2021). He also currently holds an European Resarch Council Consolidator Grant (2021-2025). Since 2022, he has been a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher.