Event
ChBE Seminar Series: Michael Tsapatsis, JHU
Tuesday, November 6, 2018
11:00 a.m.
2108 Chem/Nuc (bldg #90)
Amy Karlsson
ajkarl@umd.edu
https://chbe.umd.edu/seminars/fall2018
Speaker: Michael Tsapatsis, Professor, ChBE and APS at John Hopkins University
Title: Towards design of molecular sieve membranes and catalysts
Abstract:
My research group and collaborators have devoted more than two decades to study the crystal growth of silicalite-1: an intriguing material that still resists our efforts to morph it to a nanometer-thin, oriented, and pinhole-free film in a scalable way. In this talk, I will highlight this journey and describe what we learned along the way regarding three important topics: solvothermal nucleation and crystal growth, molecular transport in thin molecular sieve films, and the techno-economics of membrane-based processes. How lessons learned from this journey influence our research efforts in zeolite and metal organic framework adsorbent, catalyst, and membrane design will then be addressed highlighting recently discovered high performance materials.
Bio:
Michael Tsapatsis joined the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Applied Physics Laboratory (APS) at Johns Hopkins University as a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in September 2018 after spending 15 years at the Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Department at the University of Minnesota where he held the Amundson Chair and the McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair. Before joining the University of Minnesota, he was a faculty member in the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (1994-2003). He received an Engineering Diploma (1988) from The University of Patras, Greece, and MS (1991) and Ph.D. (1994) degrees from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) working with G.R. Gavalas. He was a post-doctoral fellow with M.E. Davis at Caltech (1993/94). He has published ~270 papers and has been invited to present ~160 lectures. He has supervised/co-supervised to completion the PhD thesis of ~ 40 graduate students and advised ~30 former postdoctoral fellows. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (2015).
