Join the Wilmer Lab!
Christopher E. Wilmer
Associate Professor, Department of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering
B.A.Sc. Engineering Science, University of Toronto, 2007
Ph.D. Chemical Engineering, Northwestern University, 2013
Postdoctoral Fellow, Chemistry, Harvard University, 2014
Co-founder and Technical Advisor, NuMat Technologies
Co-founder and Technical Adviser, Aeronics, Inc.
Co-founder and Managing Editor of Ledger
Selected Awards and Honors
2017 CoMSEF Young Investigator Award
2017 Scialog Fellow
2017 Foresight Fellow
2016 NSF CAREER Award Recipient
2014 Invited speaker to Google’s Solve-for-X annual meeting
2012 Named to the Forbes Top 30-Under-30 list in Energy Innovation
Click here to see more awards
Current Members
Meiirbek Islamov
Graduate Student
Meiirbek is interested in thermal transport phenomena in MOFs. He received his B.S. and M.S degrees in Chemical Engineering from Nazarbayev University (Astana, Kazakhstan) in 2017 and Columbia University in the City of New York in 2018, respectively. At Columbia, he worked on the development of ion selective Membranes for Redox-flow battery. Previously, he spent a summer doing research at Stanford University, where he worked on Rayleigh-Taylor instability in polymer solutions. Also, he visited a TNO (Delft, Netherlands) to work on CO2 capture.
Becca Segel
Graduate Student
Becca Segel is interested in commercialization of flow battery technologies involving earth abundant materials. She received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University in 2020. Becca is co-advised by Chris Wilmer and James McKone.
Shreya Thakkar
Graduate Student
Shreya Thakkar is interested in understanding the hydrogen transfer and activation in metal oxides. She received her Master’s in Chemical Engineering in 2022 form University of Massachusetts, Amherst where she worked on developing a technique for characterization of catalysts and studying CO chemisorption on platinum group metals. She received her Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering from Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai. She is co-advised by Chris Wilmer and James McKone.
Alumni
Nick Ahualli
Undergraduate Student
Nick is interested in using MOFs to develop electronic noses for disease detection. Nick is an undergraduate mechanical engineer major on the premed track. He is working on the electronic nose project in the WilmerLab, researching the interactions between biomarkers in breath with MOFs.
Paul Boone
Lead Software Developer
Paul Boone comes to Pitt with over 16 years of experience in private industry transforming ideas into actual software. He is adept at guiding non-technical people to concrete next steps, but his software and technical experience is extensive and spans data warehousing, database design, optimization and management, data center operations, cloud devops and scaling on AWS, frontend and backend web application frameworks and linux for embedded devices.
Hasan Babaei
Post Doctoral Fellow
Hasan is modeling thermal transport phenomena in MOFs. He was recently a visiting scholar in Mechanical Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Auburn University, he worked on thermal transport in nanostructure-enhanced phase change materials. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical engineering at the Iran University of Science and Technology and the University of Tehran, respectively.
Brian Day
Graduate Student
Brian in screening MOFs for electrical conductivity. He received his B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Lehigh University in 2016 where he worked on synthesizing nanoporous films. Previously at Pitt, he worked on developing nanostructured electrodes for lithium-metal batteries. Presently, he is investigating MOFs for electrical conductivity, and continuing to design MOF-based electronic noses.
Daniel Salmon
Graduate Student
Daniel is interested in cryptography, natural computing, and applications of game theory to computing. He studied mathematics, physics, and economics while an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh.
Natalie Steibel
Undergraduate Student
Natalie is producing a short movie about the causes and consequences of CO2 emission. The movie will feature carbon capture technology and porous materials. She is a 4th year chemical engineering student at the University of Pittsburgh.
Spencer Conway
Undergraduate Student
Spencer is investigating MOFs for the detection lung cancer biomarkers in breath. He is a 3rd year chemical engineering student at the University of Pittsburgh.
Christian Molfetto
Undergraduate Student
Christian is interested in using MOFs to develop electronic noses. He is a 4th year chemical engineering student at the University of Pittsburgh.
Xin Wei
Graduate Student
Xin is interested in MOFs for gas storage and separations. Xin was co-advised by Dr. Karl Johnson, and worked on gas storage and separation using MOFs. Xin’s work included studying MOFs for gas sensing applications.
Jack Cooke
Undergraduate Researcher
Jack developed a Belnder add-on for aligning and distributing objects, called Blign. Jack developed an installable add-on for Blender, a 3D computer graphics software. His add-on, called Blign, is a tool that allows users to align and distribute objects. He joined the lab as a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Pittsburgh while pursuing a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering.
Kutay B. Sezginel
Graduate Student
Kutay investigated molecular architecture and computational materials design. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Koç University in Istanbul focusing on methane storage in metal-organic frameworks. During his Ph.D., he investigated computational design of MOFs and several of their properties for applications such as drug delivery, adsorption, and thermal transport. He also worked on computational design of artificial molecular machines.
Alec Kaija
Graduate Student
Alec investigated structure-property relationships for porous materials. He received a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering and a B.A. in Spanish with a minor in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Rhode Island in 2014. During his PhD he investigated the structure-property relationships of porous materials for applications including high-pressure methane storage and carbon capture. Currently, Alec works at the Rand Corporation in Washington D.C. He is also a co-founder and Technical Adviser of Aeronics, Inc.
Jenna Gustafson
Graduate Student
Jenna developed a method for designing universal gas sensors (i.e., an electronic noses). She received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University at Buffalo in 2014. She also spent a summer doing research at Stony Brook University, where she worked on synthesizing conductive polymers for energy storage applications. During her PhD, Jenna worked on designing a universal gas sensing array (i.e. an electronic nose) of MOFs. Now she works as a data scientist at CivicScience in Pittsburgh, PA.
Michelene Saliba
Undergraduate Researcher
Michelene designed gas sensors for the detection of lung cancer biomarkers. She is currently working towards a degree in Biology from Carlow University in Pittsburgh, PA.
Sangsuk Lee
Research Intern
Sangsuk simulated thermal conductivity of breathing MOFs as a research intern in the Wilmer lab. He received his B.S. degree and M.S. degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Korea University and Carnegie Mellon University, respectively. He ran experiments and data-driven models to investigate membrane permeability and selectivity with domestic and industrial wastewater. He will start a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering at the University of Colorado-Boulder in Fall 2019, where he will be devoting to the development of advanced materials for water treatment.
Keerthi Krishna Gnanavel
Undergraduate Researcher
Krishna used Monte Carlo simulations to predict gas adsorption in MOFs. He received his B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from University of Pittsburgh.
Genesis Ruiz
Undergraduate Researcher
Genesis studied how the partial charges in MOFs may affect the diffusion of gases. She will have earned her degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus, in 2019. She has researched in different areas such as Environmental Chemistry, Pharmaceutical and Bio-Medical Engineering. The latter at Washington State University, where she studied techniques for the isolation and purification of potential biomarkers for early diagnostics in cancerous diseases.
Patrick Asinger
Undergraduate Researcher
Patrick investigated the effects of interpenetrated metal-organic frameworks on thermal conductivity. As a fourth-year undergraduate Chemical Engineering major, Patrick explored computational chemistry techniques to investigate the thermal conductivity of interpenetrated MOFs. He is now pursuing a PhD in chemical engineering.
Blake Dube
Undergraduate Researcher
Blake mapped the theoretical limits of oxygen storage. He joined the lab as a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Pittsburgh, with a major in Chemical Engineering. Blake was awarded the Brackenridge Fellowship to continue his research with the goal of shedding new light on gas storage. He is a co-founder and CEO of Aeronics, Inc.
Arash Nouri
Graduate Student
He received B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology (SUT). Now, he is getting a PhD in Computational Modeling & Simulation (CMS) where he works on turbulent flow modeling, and a M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering.
Yechuan Zhang
Graduate Student
Yechuan investigated petrochemical industrial applications of MOFs. He received his B.S. degree majoring in Oil and Gas Storage and Transportation Engineering. Now, he is pursuing his M.S. degree in Petroleum Engineering. He believes that there is a significant potential in using MOFs to separate impurities in oil and natural gas.
Conor Peytom
Undergraduate Researcher
Conor joined the lab as a third year undergraduate student, seeking his B.S. in Chemical Engineering. In addition to his research, Conor completed a co-op with a Pittsburgh based process engineering firm, Venture Engineering & Construction.
Tianyi Feng
Graduate Student
Tianyi received her B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Dalian University of Technology in China. Tianyi was twice awarded the National Scholarship as an undergraduate student, and was the leader of a National Undergraduate Training Program for Innovation named the synthesis and flocculation properties of polymerized silicate containing magnesium sulfate, aluminum sulfate and ferric sulfate (PSMAF).
Natalie Isenberg
Undergraduate Researcher
In the WilmerLab, Natalie studied quasicrystals and MOF-sensor arrays using grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations to predict gas adsorption on the sensors.
Katelyn Dray
Undergraduate Researcher
In the WilmerLab, Katelyn designed a series of DNA-origami based drug-delivery tubes and calculated drug diffusivity in them using molecular simulations.