The Berlinguette
Group at UBC

We are excited to welcome 10 new group members to our team! Graduate students: Minhyo Kang, Sam Weiss. Undergrads: Aidan Madokoro, Bowen Ge, Enoch Rassachack, Nada Nasr, Wesley Chan, Zoey Yang. Postdocs: Dr. Li Shi, Dr. Marvin Frisch.

Bill, Ben and team developed an innovative electrochemical flow reactor that electrifies cement production! Read more.

We are excited to welcome two new postdocs (Dr. Arijit Singha Hazari, Dr. Aref Eshkevarvakili), two new undergraduate students (Joseph Koh, Kyumin Kim), and one visiting international research student (Alessio Mezza) to our team.

Data from Shao and team teach how managing the aggregation of molecular catalysts on conductive surfaces can help to resolve reaction mechanisms. Read more.

In this CIFAR news story, Curtis shared his thoughts on LLNL’s recent fusion breakthrough and what it means for clean energy research.

We are excited to welcome one postdoc (Dr. Rana Faryad Ali) and four new co-op students (Lara Saber, Derek Greenaway, Kyle Kochi, Aloysio Campos da Paz) to our team.

Mia (PhD Candidate) was awarded a 2022 Tyler Lewis Clean Energy Research Foundation grant for her work related to electrification of the chemicals industry. Congrats, Mia!

We are excited to welcome four new members to our team: Aditya Menon (co-op student), Dr. Yunzhou Wen (postdoc), Dr. Gaopeng Jiang (postdoc), and Dr. Glori Chen (postdoc).

Danika Wheeler successfully defended their PhD dissertation titled Rapid Prototyping and Analytical Tools for CO₂ Electrolysis.

Ben Mowbray successfully defended his PhD dissertation titled Electrodes and Membranes for Electrocatalytic Conversion of CO₂ to CO.

Members of our Thor subgroup had an awesome time facilitating a workshop at Science World as part of the 2022 Girls in STEAM Summit.

PhD Candidate Mia Stankovic was awarded the 2022 Dr. Wilma Ethel Elias Scholarship in Chemistry.

The sputtering of back contacts is thought to destroy perovskite solar cells. Alec uses industrially well-established sputtering processes to teach that this dogma is not true. Read more in ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces.

We are excited to welcome three new sub-group leaders: Dr. Emilija Ilic (carbon team lead); Dr. Jannis Maiwald (fusion team lead); and Dr. Monika Stolar (Thor team lead).

Ben MacLeod successfully defended his PhD dissertation titled A Self-Driving Laboratory for Optimizing Thin-Film Materials.

Connor Rupnow (MASc Student) was awarded top poster prize during GC-MAC’s Accelerated Materials Discovery Workshop.

We are excited to introduce five new team members who have joined us in summer 2022: Alvin Hendricks (co-op student), Joanna Simon (visiting student), Ryan Oldford (staff), Vrisha Vyas (co-op student), and Jessica Sperryn (PhD student). Welcome to the Berlinguette Group!

Fraser Parlane successfully defended his PhD dissertation titled A Self-Driving Laboratory for Automated Materials Discovery.

Shao Ren successfully defended his PhD dissertation titled Fast CO₂ Conversion by Molecular Electrocatalysts.

Eric Lees successfully defended his PhD dissertation titled Electrochemical Conversion of Bicarbonate-Rich CO₂ Capture Solutions into Carbon Monoxide.

Aoxue and team developed a membrane reactor that produces hydrogen peroxide directly from water electrolysis, and without using H₂ gas.

Check out Mike Rooney, Ben MacLeod, and team's latest publication in Digital Discovery!

Yong and team explored the trade-off between surface area and permeability in CO₂ electrolysis. Read more.

We are excited to introduce four new team members who have joined us in spring 2022: Akshi Valji (co-op student), Colin Parkyn (co-op student), Dr. Georgia Wood (postdoc), and Dr. Abhishek Soni (postdoc). Welcome to the Berlinguette Group!

Bill and team developed an energy-efficient electrolyzer for converting captured CO₂ into CO product! Read more.

Eric and team developed a reactor that converts captured CO₂ into methane with high yields. Read more.

Aoxue Huang successfully defended her PhD dissertation titled Palladium Membrane Reactor as a Tool to Resolve Hydrogenation Reaction Pathways.

Congratulations to Shaoxuan Ren and the team for their work titled "Electrocatalysts Derived from Copper Complexes Transform CO into C2+ Products Effectively in a Flow Cell" published in Chem. Eur. J.

Congratulations to Arthur and the team for their recent article titled "Electrolytic conversion of carbon capture solutions containing carbonic anhydrase".

Useful materials must satisfy multiple objectives. The Pareto front expresses the trade-offs of competing objectives. This work uses a self-driving laboratory to map out the Pareto front for making highly conductive coatings at low temperatures.

Congratulations Roxanna and the team for their manuscript entitled "Selective Hydrogenation of Furfural Using a Membrane Reactor" recently published in EES.

Eric's manuscript entitled, "Continuum Model to Define the Chemistry and Mass Transfer in a Bicarbonate Electrolyzer" was published in ACS Energy Letters. Thank you to our collaborators at Berkeley Lab and the National Research Council of Canada!

Our Inside Unmanned Systems article, discusses how automated experiments are accelerating the discovery of clean energy materials.

Congratulations to Camden Hunt and the team for their recent work titled "Quantification of the Effect of an External Magnetic Field on Water Oxidation with Cobalt Oxide Anodes" published in JACS.

Bill and Eric showed that porous metal electrodes mediate the conversion of bicarbonate into carbon monoxide product more effectively than traditional, carbon-composite electrodes. Congrats Bill and Eric!

Fraser and Ben describe how flexible automation is empowering researchers to discover new materials faster using reconfigurable, cost-effective robotic experiments.

Our Mechanical Engineer was selected for the UBC Science Co-Op Supervisor Recognition Award for 2021!

Nina, Ben, and our collaborators at CEA Liten introduce "A machine vision tool for facilitating the optimization of large-area perovskite photovoltaics" in their latest paper in npj computational materials!

Roxanna Delima successfully defended her PhD dissertation on carbon-neutral hydrogenation using a palladium membrane reactor.

Aoxue Huang was selected as the winner of the 2021 Dr. Wilma Ethel Elias Scholarship in Chemistry.

Shao Ren was selected as the winner of the 2021 Brian and Jane James Graduate Scholarship in Catalysis Research.

Eric and Ben present an authoritative review of how gas diffusion electrodes affect CO2RR electrolysis, and they also outline opportunities to advance the field.

Ben Mowbray teaches “How Catalyst Dispersion Solvents Affect CO₂ Electrolyzer Gas Diffusion Electrodes”. The paper was selected as an ACS Editors' Choice in Energy & Fuels.

Arthur Fink shows how the electrolyte cation affects bicarbonate electrolysis.

Dr. Tengfei Li was awarded the prestigious Banting Fellowship! Congratulations, Tengfei!

We were honored to collaborate with Dr. Masel and team on a paper published in Nature Nanotechnology entitled “An industrial perspective on catalysts for low-temperature CO₂ electrolysis”.

Congratulations to Aiko Kurimoto and the team for their paper published in Angewandte Chemie, entitled “Physical Separation of H₂ Activation from Hydrogenation Chemistry Reveals the Specific Role of Secondary Metal Catalysts”.

In their paper “Electrolysis Can Be Used to Resolve Hydrogenation Pathways at Palladium Surfaces in a Membrane Reactor”, Aoxue Huang and team demonstrate that an electrocatalytic palladium membrane reactor can be used to study hydrogenation reaction mechanisms at ambient temperatures.

We are excited to introduce our new team members: Komal Fatima and Julian Black. Welcome to the Berlinguette Group!

The Science magazine has published an article about Ada and other AI-driven material robots.

The Globe & Mail discusses a chemical shortcut developed by the Berlinguette Group that could help draw carbon out of the atmosphere!

We went exploring for disruptive energy technologies and found some interesting science along the way.