Steven Chavez, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, has been awarded a Petroleum Research Fund (PRF) grant from the American Chemical Society (ACS). This honor supports early-career investigators pursuing new research directions.
The award includes a two-year $ =110,000 grant to support Chavez’s research in advancing the fundamental understanding of light-driven natural gas valorization catalysts. The award is one of 80 grants totalling $8.6 million announced by ACS Board of Directors in June. Chavez’s research proposes to develop a molecular-level understanding of light-driven natural gas valorization by studying the interplay between light harvesting, dynamic catalyst morphology, and kinetics in precisely engineered plasmonic catalysts. Kinetic data from catalysts with defined sizes and compositions will inform mechanistic models. The Chavez lab will complement these measurements with operando techniques to link the catalysts’ atomic physical and chemical structure to their performance. By supporting these studies with detailed electronic structure calculations, Chavez aims to develop new light-driven catalysts and create a general framework for optimizing them for other reactions related to energy production and chemical manufacturing.
Preliminary data for this work was provided by the Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellowship in Chemical Sciences, awarded by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation.
Collaborators on the project include Philippe Sautet, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UCLA, and Simon Bare of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, who will contribute expertise in computational modeling and synchrotron-based X-ray techniques, respectively.