My research seeks to answer the question: How do the additional reactive components in real industrial wastes reshape reaction behavior?
As a postdoc, I have developed tools to be implemented in an operating industrial-scale chemical manufacturing process embedded in a national laboratory environment.
Despite decades of process knowledge and several years of development, the utility of this process is still constrained by the complexity of the waste it generates. Similarly, other chemical manufacturing processes generates wastes of similar or higher complexity. Because of their complexity, these wastes are typically incinerated, landfilled, dumped, stacked, or stored.
Such disposal methods result in in water, air, and soil pollution that produces real human consequences, such as asthma, parasitic and viral infections, radiation sickness, birth defects, and cancer.
Unfortunately, state-of-the-art reactions intended to manage industrial wastes almost exclusively use purified, single-component feeds in their process development. This is particularly evident in electrocatalytic processes, where - despite the ability to exceed Carnot-type limitations inherent to thermally-driven processes - little to no industrial implementation has occurred.
Implementation is limited in part because use of these single-component feeds overlooks serious stability and durability consequences at the process scale [Gaines, Kenis, et al. ACS Sust. Chem. Eng. 2025], as well as design and integration requirements at the system scale [Gaines, Kenis, et al. Submitted, Nat. Chem. Eng.]
My research thus seeks to evaluate the behavior of these complex wastes at the interfacial-, process-, and system scales during their upgrading to value-added products. By designing reactions that explicitly account for the non-idealities and multi-component natures of such feeds, my work ultimately builds scalable, cost-effective, and industrially-implementable electrified waste upgrading systems.
I have over a decade of leadership experience from my roles as a research mentor and coach, where I've worked with mentees across wide ranges of age (8-25) and skill. I've served as a project and/or people manager for teams as small as 4 and as large as 31. My mentees have won state and national awards, and secured top Ph.D. program admissions and full-time industry job offers.