Dionisios Vlachos, Chair
The University of Delaware, USA
Dion Vlachos is the chair of the Editorial Board, the Unidel Dan Rich Energy Chaired Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and Physics and Astronomy, and the Delaware Energy Institute Director at the University of Delaware.
Vlachos’ research focuses on circular economy and waste derivatization, multiscale modeling and simulation, distributed (bio)chemical manufacturing, process intensification and novel catalytic reactors, renewable fuels and chemicals, in silico materials prediction, and kinetic modeling. He has been one of the founders of the multiscale modeling field in catalysis and reaction engineering and has conducted foundational research in biomass and plastics recycling and upcycling.
Ian R Baxendale, Associate editor
Durham University, UK
Ian Baxendale is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry, University of Durham, UK. He works on the design and implementation of new technologies to enable complex chemical syntheses, including flow synthesis, automated methodologies, microwave reactors and immobilised reagents and scavengers.
Ian previously co-founded the Innovative Technology Centre, Cambridge and spin out company Reaxa Ltd with Prof. Steven Ley. He gives teaching lectures and runs lab training for industrial and academic researchers to learn more about his methods, as well as acting as a scientific consultant to a number of companies.
Rajamani Gounder, Associate editor
Purdue University, USA
Raj Gounder is a Professor in the Davidson School of Chemical Engineering at Purdue University. His research interests are in catalysis and reaction engineering, including studying the kinetic and mechanistic details of catalytic reactions, synthesizing porous materials with tailored site and surface properties, and developing methods to characterize and titrate active sites in catalytic surfaces. His group studies practical applications to protect our environment and to develop sustainable routes to synthesize chemicals and fuels. He is the recipient of the 2023 Rutherford Aris Award from ISCRE, and the 2021 Early Career in Catalysis Award from the ACS Catalysis Division.
Saif A Khan, Associate editor
National University of Singapore, Singapore
Saif Khan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the National University of Singapore, Singapore, and an Associate Editor for Reaction Chemistry & Engineering, helping to ensure that articles meet the stringent criteria required for publication in the journal. He works on the design and analysis of chemical reactors which perhaps go beyond the familiar – think reactions in bubbles, droplets and foams.
His platform of choice is microfluidic systems, which allow the control of transport properties and non-equilibrium conditions for efficient, economical and sustainable chemical synthesis. Dr Khan was a R. T. Haslam Presidential Fellow at MIT prior to moving to Singapore.
Francesca Paradisi, Associate editor
University of Bern, Switzerland
Professor Paradisi graduated in Chemistry from the University of Bologna, where she remained also for her PhD in synthetic organic chemistry. In 2002, she joined the group of Professor Engel at University College Dublin for her post doc and started working in the area of Biocatalysis. After a brief stint in Enzolve Technologies, a spinoff company, in 2005, she got her first academic position in the School of Chemistry in UCD in 2006, where she remained till 2016. She was recruited then by the University of Nottingham as Associate Professor in Biocatalysis and promoted to Full Professor in 2019. In the same year however, she was offered the Chair of Sustainable Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of Bern and relocated to Switzerland.
She is the recipient of the Green and Sustainable Chemistry Award 2021, jointly sponsored by the Swiss Chemical Society and Syngenta for her ground-breaking work in developing eco-friendly and ultra-efficient biotransformations for the synthesis of high-value chemicals, dramatically increasing the applicability of biocatalysis.
Laura Torrente Murciano, Associate editor
University of Cambridge, UK
Laura Torrente is a lecturer in the Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology Department at the University of Cambridge and an EPSRC Fellow in Manufacturing. She is a member of the UK Catalysis Hub, Energy@Cambridge and the NanoCDT. Prior to this, she was a lecturer at the University of Bath, a Research Associate at Imperial College London and worked as an R&D Engineer at Repsol YPF (Spain).
Her research focuses on the development of sustainable technologies for a wide range of applications such as sustainable energy (production of hydrogen from waste), the use of bio-derived feedstocks and novel manufacturing routes. Her group has expertise in three complementary areas:
- development of stable metal nanoparticles-based catalysts and nanostructured materials
- innovation on reactor design supported by fluid dynamic simulations, including micro-reactors
- integration of reaction and separation processes (e.g. membrane reactors and emulsions)
Haihui Wang, Associate editor
Tsinghua University, China
Haihui Wang is a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Tsinghua University, China. He works on the inorganic membranes for clean energy and clear environment including membrane separation, membrane reactor, electrocatalysis and batteries. He received the Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in 2003 and got the Distinguished Young Scientist Foundation, National Nature Science Foundation of China in 2012. He was a Fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry since 2016.
Richard Bourne, Associate editor
University of Leeds, UK
Richard Bourne is currently Professor of Digital Chemical Manufacturing at the University of Leeds based at the Institute of Process Research and Development (IPRD) at Leeds, working on rapid process development and continuous flow chemistry. He currently holds a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair on Digital Discovery and Manufacturing of Pharmaceuticals. His research group is particularly focussed on the use of automated flow systems combining online analysis, feedback control and evolutionary algorithms to provide process understanding and optimisation.
Petra E de Jongh
Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Petra de Jongh is Chair of Catalysts and Energy Materials in the Debye Institute for Nanomaterials Science at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and a Reaction Chemistry & Engineering as well as ChemCatChem Editorial Board member. She studies nanostructured inorganic materials (typically metal (oxide) nanoparticles and/or mesoporous materials) to gain insight into the impact of composition, particle size, confinement, and pore structure on the functionality of these materials for applications in catalysis and energy conversion and storage. Professor de Jongh is a member of the Royal Dutch National Academy of Sciences.
Shane Grosser
Merck, USA
Shane Grosser did his undergrad at the University of Rochester in chemical engineering, graduating in 2002, and received a PhD in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2007. His PhD was focused on DNA sequencing technologies working for Jim Schneider. Since 2007, Shane has worked at Merck in Rahway NJ, mostly within Chemical Engineering Research and Development and more recently in Small Molecule Process Research and Development Enabling Technologies.
In addition to numerous roles supporting Merck’s late-stage development pipeline, Shane led the Process Development Intensification Lab within Chemical Engineering Research and Development for 6 years, with a focus on the development of high-data-density tools and methodologies to streamline the acquisition of deep, fundamental process understanding. Additionally, he has spent the better part of his career supporting Merck’s biocatalysis efforts as a subject matter expert in process engineering of biocatalytic processes with particular expertise in enzyme immobilization, protein removal, and aerobic biocatalytic oxidation.
Since early 2020, Shane has led the Data-Rich Experimentation group, which expands the capabilities of the Process Development Intensification Lab to include high-throughput experimentation, reaction engineering, and data-science& machine learning, supporting the broader Process Research and Development space at Merck.
Heather J. Kulik
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Professor Heather J. Kulik is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT. She received her B.E. in Chemical Engineering from the Cooper Union in 2004 and her Ph.D. from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT in 2009. She completed postdoctoral training at Lawrence Livermore and Stanford, prior to joining MIT as a faculty member in November 2013. Her research in computational catalysis and materials science has been recognised by a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface, Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award and Director’s fellowship, NSF CAREER Award, the AAAS Marion Milligan Mason Award, the Journal of Physical Chemistry Lectureship and a Sloan Fellowship in chemistry, among others.
Anita Maguire
University College Cork, Ireland
Anita R. Maguire undertook undergraduate and postgraduate studies at University College Cork (B.Sc., 1985; Ph.D., 1989), focusing during her studies on asymmetric catalysis in reactions of α-diazoketones. Following postdoctoral research in the Facultes Universitaires, Namur, Belgium and subsequently at the University of Exeter, she returned to Cork in 1991 initially as a Lecturer in Organic Chemistry, then as Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry in 2002 and then as the first Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry in 2004.
From 2011 to 2021, she was Vice President for Research and Innovation at University College Cork. From 2011 to 2016, she was an Adjunct Professor at the University of Bergen. Her research interests include asymmetric synthesis, including transition-metal catalysis and biocatalysis, the development of novel synthetic methodology employing α-diazocarbonyl compounds, organosulfur chemistry and continuous flow chemistry, and the design and synthesis of bioactive compounds with potential pharmaceutical applications.
Anita is a co-PI in the Synthesis and Solid State Pharmaceutical Centre (SSPC). She is the inaugural Chair of the National Forum on Research Integrity and was elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2014.
Megan Smyth
Almac Sciences, UK
Dr Megan Smyth is Team Leader within the Technology Group at Almac Sciences. She graduated from The Queen’s University of Belfast with a 1st Class MSci (Hons) in Chemistry in 2012 before returning to gain a Ph.D. in 2016. In 2022, Megan completed an MBA (with distinction) at the University of Aberdeen. Megan leads multiple custom synthesis projects and is responsible for development and delivery of flow chemistry. She has additional experience including bioprocessing, technology transfer and process scale-up. Megan was recently awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.
