Raffaella is a Full Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and Head of the Laboratory of Nanochemistry for Energy (LNCE) at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). She leads a multidisciplinary research program in which the synthesis of well-defined and tunable catalytic materials enables a fundamental understanding of catalytic phenomena and guides the development of design principles for selective and stable electrocatalysts.

She received her Laurea in Chemistry from the University of Bari in 2005 and earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Lecce in 2010. She subsequently spent 6 years in US. She joined the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) first as a postdoctoral researcher from 2010 to 2012 and then as a project scientist from 2012 to 2013. From 2013 to 2015, she was a tenure-track staff scientist at LBNL where she started her own research program within the Joint Center of Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP), In 2015, she joined EPFL as a tenure-track Assistant Professor.

Raffaella's research has been recognized with several awards, including the Swiss Chemical Society Werner Prize (2021), the Eastman Lecture in Catalysis at the University of California, Berkeley (2023), the Russel Lecture at Queen's University, Canada (2024), and the ACS Inorganic Nanoscience Award (2024). She also serves as an Associate Editor of ACS Catalysis since 2021.

It is our pleasure to welcome Raffaella to PodCAT!

We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Cathleen Crudden back to PodCAT for our 60th episode! Dr. Crudden is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Queen's, and the Founder and Scientific Director of the Carbon to Metal Coating Institute (C2MCI). She is a Research Professor in Nagoya, Japan, where she runs a satellite lab. Crudden has secured over $72M in research grants over her career, including a 2021 $24M New Frontiers Research Fund – Transformation (NFRF-T) grant, which forms the basis of the C2MCI.

Crudden's accomplishments include Fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada, Fellowship in the American Chemical Society, the Chemical Institute of Canada, the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), and the CNRS (France). She is an elected international fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science (AAAS).

Crudden has won numerous awards for her work, including the Arthur C. Cope Scholar (American Chemical Society), the NSERC 2023 Polanyi Award, and the Alfred Bader award. In recognition of her impact on the field, the Canadian Journal of Chemistry dedicated a special issue to her scientific achievements, led by former trainees. She was also awarded the Montreal Medal of the Chemical Instiute of Canada, the highest award for service.

She has served as the Chair of the Fellowship committee for the Royal Society of Canada (Mathematical and Physical Sciences) and has been a panel member for Sloan Research Fellowships, and currently chairs the Cope Scholar/Cope Prize committee.

She is Editor-in-chief of ACS Catalysis, the premier journal for publication of research in the catalysis sciences.

Karthish Manthiram is the Bren Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, and the Exeuctive Officer for Chemical Engineering at Caltech. The Manthiram Lab is focused on the development of electrified catalysts for the sustainable synthesis of molecules that go into constructing the physical world, including plastics and fertilizers, using renewable feedstocks. Karthish received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University in 2010 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley in 2015 with Prof. Paul Alivisatos. After a one-year postdoc at the California Institute of Technology with Prof. Robert H. Grubbs, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an Assistant Professor in 2017. In 2021, he moved to Caltech as a Full Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry. In 2022, he was named the Director of the Solar Science and Catalysis Center in the Resnick Sustainability Institute. In 2025, he was named the Bren Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry and started as Chair for Chemical Engineering.

Karthish's research and teaching has been recognized with several awards, including the Moore Inventor Fellowship, DOE Early Career Award, NSF CAREER Award, Sloan Research Fellowship, Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science, Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, Infosys Prize, MIT Chemical Engineering Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, and MIT Teaching with Digital Technology Award. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Manthiram to PodCAT!

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!

Prof. Lars Grabow is the Dan Luss Professor in the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Houston. He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin in 2008, followed by postdoctoral appointments at the Technical University of Denmark and Stanford University. His expertise is the application of electronic structure calculations, kinetic modeling, data science and transient kinetic characterization to problems in heterogeneous and electro-catalysis, surface science, and energy transition.

Prof. Grabow received the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Early Career Award (2014), and the NSF CAREER Award (2015), among others. At the University of Houston, he was recognized with the Undergraduate Research Mentoring Award and was selected as "Pathway Professor" teaching courses with high DWIF rates. Notable prior service roles include Chair of the Southwest Catalysis Society (SWCS) and the Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division of AIChE. Currently, he serves as NACS representative for SWCS and Alternate Councilor for the ACS CATL Division. He is also Editor-in-Chief of ChemistryEurope, after previously serving as Editor of Surface Science. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Grabow to PodCAT!

Prof. Brandon Bukowski is an Assistant Professor in the department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. He holds BS and PhD degrees in Chemical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Purdue University, respectively. At Purdue he was advised by Jeffrey Greeley where he modeled the kinetics of zeolite and supported nanoparticle catalysts using Density Functional Theory and Molecular Dynamics. He performed post-doctoral research at Northwestern University under the supervision of Randall Snurr studying diffusion in nanoporous materials including metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and porous polymers. Bukowski started at Johns Hopkins University in July of 2021. He has received a DOE BES Early Career Research Award, an Amazon Research Award, a Doctoral New Investigator grant from the ACS Petroleum Research Fund, a Ralph E. Powe award from Oak Ridge Associated Universities, and a Hopkins Catalyst Award. He is the program chair for the AIChE catalysis and reaction engineering division and program chair of the Northeast Corridor Zeolite Association. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Bukowski to PodCAT!