Prof. Michael S. Wong, Ph.D, is the Tina and Sunit Patel Chair in Molecular Nanotechnology and professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Rice University. He is also professor in the Departments of Chemistry, of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and of Materials Science and Nano Engineering. He received his education and training at Caltech, MIT, and UCSB. He is Research Thrust Leader in the Rice WaTER Institute and Director of the Rice PFAS Abatement and Replacement Center (Rice PAR). His research program tackles water, sustainability, and energy issues through chemical engineering, materials chemistry, and heterogeneous catalysis approaches. He develops thermal/photo/electro-catalysis technologies to de-construct molecules, i.e., treat water of undesirable contaminants like drycleaning and industrial solvents, fertilizer runoff, and PFAS. His Catalysis and Nanomaterials Laboratory has generated over 220 publications, cited cumulatively over 20,000 times (h-index > 75). He received the 2023 AIChE Lawrence K. Cecil Award, the highest environmental honor in chemical engineering, the International Precious Metals Institute's 2025 Henry J. Albert Award for pioneering precious metal catalysis for clean water applications, and the 2025 AIChE NSEF Award, the highest nanotechnology honor in chemical engineering. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the American Chemical Society (ACS), and the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). He serves on the ACS Society Committee on Publications, and as an executive editor for the ACS journal Environmental Science and Technology. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Wong to PodCAT!

Prof. Steven Chavez is an Assistant Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UCLA. His long-term career goal is to develop tools and model systems to advance mechanistic understanding of dynamics in heterogenous catalysis. Prior to UCLA, he was previously an Arnold O. Beckman postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University. Prior to Stanford, he received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan as a NSF Graduate Research Fellow, a Ford Foundation Fellow, a Rackham Merit Fellow, and a Rackham Predoctoral Fellow. Outside of research, he is a strong advocate for increasing diversity in STEM. He has 14+ years of experience conceiving, planning, and executing programs/events to improve the recruitment and retention of first-generation, low-income students in STEM fields. At UCLA, Steven works with the Chicano Studies Research Center to implement and evaluate programs to help UCLA reach its goal of becoming a Hispanic Serving Institution. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Chavez to PodCAT!

Professor Christopher W. Jones is the John F. Brock III School Chair and Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. Dr. Jones leads a research group that works on materials, catalysis and adsorption. In catalysis, he has worked at the interface of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, with recent work focusing on thermal heterogeneous catalysis. Dr. Jones was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal, ACS Catalysis, and served 8 years as Vice-President of the North American Catalysis Society. Today he is Editor-in-Chief the open access, multidisciplinary journal, JACS Au. Jones is also known for his 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 currently serves as President of the International Adsorption Society. Jones' work in both catalysis and CO2 separation has been recognized with awards from various organizations including the ACS, ASEE, AIChE and NACS. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Jones to PodCAT!