Soumyabrata Roy

Renewable electricity-powered conversion of carbon dioxide (CO₂) to fuels and chemicals has the potential to close the anthropogenic carbon cycle at meaningful scales and achieve global sustainability goals. It provides an effective route to store renewable energy in chemical bonds for its modular utilization in a circular carbon economy. However, the technological progress of this complex chemical transformation is stymied due to the lack of systematic materials design principles, poor understanding of the convoluted reaction pathways that control efficiency and selectivity, and complexities associated with elementary electron and mass transfer in the reaction environment. At a system level, issues of carbon and energy conversion efficiencies need to be addressed. Engineering of materials and interfaces can have profound effects on the correlated bulk and surface physicochemical properties for judicious tuning of these parameters and reaction pathways. In my talk, I will present examples of our research to build a broad perspective on how the rational design of materials and processes can solve some key scientific/technological challenges in electron-driven CO₂ recycling pathways through an understanding of structure-activity correlations.  On the materials aspect, the engineering of low-dimensional carbon and copper-based systems will be discussed. Integration of electrochemical CO₂ conversion with capture and alternative anodic oxidation reactions will be showcased to highlight emerging approaches in addressing technological challenges from a process perspective.

Dr. Soumyabrata Roy is a research scientist at the department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering, Rice University and incoming assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He received his Ph.D. degree in Chemical Science from JNCASR, Bangalore after completing his master’s from IIT Kharagpur and bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Presidency College, Calcutta, India.  His current research focuses on developing advanced materials and integrated processes for catalytic energy/chemical conversion, greenhouse gas capture and utilization, and process intensification. He is a recipient of the Inspire Fellowship from DST- Govt. of India, RSC Commonwealth Grants, Indo-German DAAD fellowship, and Future faculty fellowship from Rice University. 

• Time: 11:00 AM
• Location: 206 Furnas Hall