Prof Chunshan Song

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Chunshan Song is Dean of the Faculty of Science and Wei Lun Professor of Chemistry at the Chinese University of Hong Kong since 2020. He was Director of EMS Energy Institute and Distinguished Professor of Fuel Science and Chemical Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University where he was founding Director of the University Coalition for Fossil Energy Research funded by US DOE, and Associate Director for Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment until 2020. His research involves chemistry and catalysis for energy and fuels, CO2 capture and utilization, synthesis and application of nano-porous materials. An elected Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS), he has ~500 refereed journal articles, 16 edited books and 8 patents. He received George A. Olah Award in Hydrocarbon or Petroleum Chemistry; Henry H. Storch Award in Energy Chemistry; Fulbright Distinguished Scholar; Changjiang Scholar; Outstanding Achievement Award from the Chinese American Chemical Society; ACS Energy & Fuels Distinguished Researcher Award; Herman Pines Award in Catalysis; Catalysis Club of Philadelphia Award; Global Alumni Fellow of Osaka University; Honorary Professor of Tianjin University; Alumni Achievement Award from Dalian University of Technology; and from Penn State, Faculty Scholar Medal, Distinguished Professor, and Wilson Award for Excellence in Research. He served as editor, associate editor or advisory board member for 14 journals. He received PhD (1989) and MS (1986) in Applied Chemistry from Osaka University, Japan, and BS in Chemical Engineering (1982) from Dalian University of Technology, and held visiting professorship at Imperial College London, University of Paris VI, Tsinghua University, and Dalian University of Technology.

Dr. Malcolm A. Wilson

CCS Consultant

Malcolm received his BSc from the University of Nottingham (1972), and his MSc (1977) and PhD (1981) from the University of Saskatchewan. Malcolm is now retired but retains an interest in Carbon Capture and Storage including co-editing a book “Geophysics and Geosequestration” (Cambridge University Press). A second book will be coming out in early 2024. He is also consulting on CCS and is part of two start-up companies. In 1998, Malcolm played a significant role in the establishment of the Petroleum Technology Research Centre (PTRC) in Regina. After having served on the board, he became the CEO in January, 2011 and stayed till June 2013. He was active (and head of the Canadian delegation) on an ISO committee (ISO TC265) which has developed a number of voluntary standards for CO2 Capture, Transport and Storage for a number of years. He was instrumental in the creation of the IEAGHG Weyburn-Midale CO₂ Monitoring and Storage Project, a world recognised CO₂ storage research project, including editing the final report of phase one. Malcolm was a member of Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the scientific team awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Al Gore, and for which Malcolm was a lead author on the IPCC Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage. He is the former Director of the International Test Centre for CO₂ Capture (ITC). He also founded the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative (PARC), serving as its first head. In 2009, Malcolm was awarded the University of Saskatchewan Alumni Award of Achievement for outstanding contributions to profession, community and the University of Saskatchewan. In the same year, Saskatchewan Business Magazine named him one of Saskatchewan's ten most influential men. In 2013 he was recognised as one of five influential people in the Province’s oil industry. He was the joint winner of the 2006 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Synergy Award for his work with ITC (the International Test Centre for CO2 Capture).

Prof Vicki Chen

University of Technology Sydney

Professor Vicki Chen is currently the Provost and Senior Vice-President of the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Professor Chen graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. She has over twenty-five years research experience in the areas of membrane separation, gas separation, biocatalytic systems, nanomaterials, and water treatment. In the area of carbon capture, she was involved in membrane projects with the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC) and Coal Innovation NSW. Prior to joining UTS in 2022, Professor Chen was the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Architecture, and IT at the University of Queensland (UQ). Previously, she was a professor in the School of Chemical Engineering at the UNSW Sydney before taking on the substantive Head of School position (2014 – 2018) and was the Director of the UNESCO Centre for Membrane Science and Technology at UNSW (2006 – 2014). Professor Chen is currently on the editorial board for the Journal of Membrane Science and editorial advisory board of Macromolecules and was formerly on the editorial board for the Desalination Journal. Professor Chen is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE) and a founding board member of the Membrane Society of Australasia.

Prof Robert J. (Bob) Farrauto

Columbia University in the City of New York

Robert (Bob) Farrauto, PhD, utilizes his 40+ years of industrial catalysis experience to currently train graduate and under graduate students in applied environmental catalysis. During his industrial career he commercialized a number of advanced materials for automotive emission control, specialty chemicals and hydrogen generation. Upon retiring from BASF (formerly Engelhard), Iselin, NJ as a Vice President of Research in 2012, he was appointed Professor of Professional Practice in the Earth and Environmental Engineering (EEE) Department of Columbia University in the City of New York. His dual function materials, for direct air capture of CO2, is being scaled up future pilot plant studies with their engineering partner. This work is funded by the US Department of energy. Bob is the author (co-author) of 143 journal publications and 55 US patents. He is co-author of three catalyst textbooks. He has a Google scholar rating of 56.He is the recipient of a number of research awards and a senior member of the National Academy of Inventors based on his 55 US patents. He received a BS from Manhattan College, Bronx, New York and PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York.

Prof Christopher Jones

Georgia Institute of Technology

Professor Jones is the John F. Brock III School Chair and Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. He joined Georgia Tech as an Assistant Professor in 2000 and then rose through the faculty ranks, including serving as Associate Vice President for Research from 2013-2019, with a period as Interim Executive Vice-President for Research in 2018.

Dr. Jones leads a research group that works on materials, catalysis and adsorption. He is known for his extensive and pioneering 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 served on the National Academies Consensus Study on Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration in 2017-2018, focusing on DAC.

He also has produced an extensive body of work in catalysis. Dr. Jones was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal, ACS Catalysis, and is Vice-President of both the North American Catalysis Society and the International Adsorption Society. He was tapped in 2020 to launch the new open access American Chemical Society journal, JACS Au. (Read as Jacks Gold)

Jones’ work in both catalysis and CO₂ separation has been recognized with awards from numerous organizations including the ACS, ASEE, AIChE and the North American Catalysis Society. Georgia Tech has recognized Jones as the Institute’s Outstanding Faculty Research Author (2011), for Research Program Development (2012) and for Research Innovation (2021). In 2022, he was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering.

Prof Sandra Kentish

University of Melbourne

Professor Sandra Kentish is a Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor at the University of Melbourne. She was Head of the School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering (2016-2022) and Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering (2012-2016). Her research in carbon capture has extended for over 20 years and includes fundamental work at the laboratory scale through to industrial pilot scale trials of both solvent and membrane technology. She was the Discipline Leader in the CRC for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC) for Membrane Technology from 2003-2015. Professor Kentish was named one of Australia's Most Innovative Engineers by Engineers Australia in 2017 and a Woman of Influence by the Australian Financial Review in 2018. She was elected to the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering in 2019 and is now Chair of its Victorian Division. She sits on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control and the Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering, is an Associate Editor of the AIChE Journal and an Editor of the Journal of Membrane Science. She was an inaugural Board member of the Membrane Society of Australasia and recently received their Anita Hill Leadership Award.

Prof Paitoon Tontiwachwuthikul

University of Regina

Dr. Paitoon Tontiwachwuthikul (known as P.T.), is currently a full professor and the co-founder of Clean Energy Technology Research Institute (CETRi) at the University of Regina. He is a key international researcher in the area of advanced CO2 capture and separation from industrial gas streams as well as low-carbon energy development. He has provided technical advice to governments and industries nationally and internationally. Dr. PT has played a vital role in the establishment of the Petroleum Technology Research Centre (PTRC), one of the largest petroleum research centers in North America. He has also served as a guest editor of the IEAGHG special issue on “IEA Weyburn-Midale CO2 Monitoring and Storage Project (the world’s largest CO2 for EOR and CCS program)” in the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control (IJGGC Elsevier), in 2013. In 2016, Dr. P.T. was inducted as a Fellow in the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE).

Dr. P.T. is currently a member of the Editorial Board of IJGGC (Elsevier) and Clean Energy Journal (Oxford Press). In addition, he is serving as the Honorary Editor-in-Chief of PETROLEUM Journal (Elsevier). Dr. P.T. has published extensively in AIChE Journal, Applied Energy, Fuels, Chemical Engineering Science, International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, Membrane Science, Petroleum, Chemical Engineering Journal, Carbon Management, Separation & Purification Technology, Petroleum, Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research.

His publication records can be tracked at http://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=7sB0sckAAAAJ&hl=en and https://www.linkedin.com/in/paitoon-tontiwachwuthikul-aa3610108/

Prof Nilay Shah

Imperial College London

Professor Nilay Shah is Professor and former Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London. Professor Shah was awarded OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 2020 for his contribution to the decarbonisation of the UK economy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He has 30+ years’ experience in academia and has graduated 40+ PhD students who have all gone on to successful careers in industry, academia, consultancy, and the civil service. His research interests include the application of multiscale process modelling and mathematical/systems engineering techniques to analyse and optimise complex, spatially-and temporally explicit low-carbon industrial and energy systems, including chemical process systems, urban energy systems, carbon capture and storage, hydrogen infrastructures, and bioenergy systems. He has 300+ papers (~30k citations; h-index~90). He has experience in leading many energy and process systems related projects, including EPSRC, H2020 and industrially funded projects. He won the prestigious 2007 MacRobert award (RAEng) and was awarded the IChemE Junior Moulton Medal (1996), ICI/RAEngFellowship (1997-2002), RSC Beilby Medal (2005), IChemE Hutchison (2012) and Sargent (2019) Medals.

Prof Suojiang Zhang

Institute of Process Engineering, China Academy of Sciences

Suojiang Zhang is Professor and Director General of Institute of Process Engineering (IPE), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Member of CAS, Director of Beijing Key Laboratory of Ionic Liquids Clean Process, and Director of the Professional Committee of Chinese Chemical Society Ionic Liquids and Green Engineering, Dean of College of Chemical Engineering, University of CAS, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

He has been committed to research on ionic liquids (ILs) and green processes, closely integrating basic research of ILs with industrial applications, and has been striving to build a transformative technological system for green chemical processes. In 2010, he was awarded the second prize of the National Natural Science Award of China. He was subsequently elected as the Member of CAS in 2015 and won the CAS S&T for Development Award in 2017. In 2020, he was awarded the Ho Leung Ho Lee Science and Technology Progress Award. He also won the CCS-BASF Youth Knowledge Innovation Award, the Beijing Technology Invention Award, and the Hou Debang Chemical Technology Achievement Award. He has been named in the WoS Highly Cited Researchers Report and has published more than 600 articles with over 34,000 citations and an H-index of 92. He has invented more than 10 green technologies and owns 200 patents. In addition, he founded two international academic journals, Green Energy & Environment (GEE, IF=8.207, JCR Q1) in 2016 and Green Chemical Engineering (GreenChE) in 2020, and served as the founding editor-in-chief. He initiated the Asia-Pacific Conference on Ionic Liquids and Green Process (APCIL) and the National Conference on Ionic Liquids (ILC), which have become a series of reputational academic events in the field of ILs in China and worldwide.

Prof Huanting Wang

Monash University

Dr. Huanting Wang is a Professor and ARC Australian Laureate Fellow in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Director of the ARC Research Hub for Energy-efficient Separation. His research focuses on the synthesis and design of composite membranes and nanomaterials for gas separation, water desalination and purification, chiral separation, ion transport and separation, and electrochemical energy applications. He is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry, The American Institute of Chemical Engineers and Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering. Prof. Wang has received many awards including IChemE Underwood Medal (2021), MSA Tony Fane Award (2020) and RACI R.K. Murphy Medal (2019). He has co-authored over 400 papers (highly cited researcher) and had 11 patents licensed to six companies for commercialization including three Australian startup companies. Prof. Wang is an Associate Editor of Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Executive Editor-in-chief of Advanced Membranes and a Guest Editor of Separation and Purification Technology.

Distinguished Fellow