Balakumar Emayavaramban; emayavarambanb@cardiff.ac.uk
Balakumar received his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. The main focus of his research was the base metal catalyzed (de)hydrogenative functionalization. In 2014 he joined the Prof. Duncan Wass group as a PDRA at Cardiff University in 2021. His role is to synthesize and characterize new and known organometallic complexes and their homogeneous catalytic screening for bio alcohol and carbon dioxide valorization reactions. A major focus of their project is to develop potential metal catalysts for the synthesis of the advanced biofuel isobutanol via the Guerbet reaction. The Guerbet reaction is a potential green process for bio alcohol synthesis by utilizing renewable feedstock chemicals and producing water as the sole side product. This current project is funded by EPSRC and the UK Catalysis Hub.
Michael Higham; HighamM@cardiff.ac.uk
Michael Higham completed a PhD in Chemical Science and Technology at the Institut CatalĂ dâInvestigaciĂł QuĂmica (ICIQ, Catalan Institute of Chemical Research) in November 2017. Michael joined Prof. Sir Richard Catlowâs group at Cardiff University in August 2018, supported by the GCRF (Global Challenges Research Fund) START (Synchotron Techniques for African Research and Technology) project, providing computational insights to support experimental work utilising the synchrotron facilities at Diamond, focusing on Cu-based catalysts for methanol synthesis from CO2. In September 2021, Michael joined Prof. Catlowâs UCL team as a postdoctoral researcher and is currently investigating metal nitride catalysts and nitrogen looping materials for ammonia synthesis, in collaboration with Prof. Justin Hargreaves at the University of Glasgow.Â
Abraham Nieva de la Hidalga; NievadelaHidalgaA@cardiff.ac.uk
Abraham Nieva de la Hidalga received his PhD from the School of Computer Science of the University of Manchester (UK) in 2010. After his PhD, he collaborated as a research assistant at the Manchester Business School on two projects. In COMMIUS, he participated in the development of a JAVA/OSGI based e-commerce mail filtering system. In SOA4ALL, he helped documenting common workflow patterns to support end-users building web-service mashups (ad-hoc workflows). In 2012, he joined the Biodiversity Informatics Research group at the Cardiff University School of Computer Science and Informatics, as research associate in the BioVeL project. After BioVeL, in 2015, he obtained a scholarship (CONACYT-Mexico) for a postdoctoral project developing a virtual biotechnology laboratory at Polytechnic University of Puebla, building on his work at BioVeL. He returned to the Cardiff University School of Computer Science and Informatics (2016), as research associate in the Data and Knowledge Engineering Group, collaborating in ENVRIplus and ICEDIG. In ENVRIplus, he analysed and modelled large-scale systems for environmental research. In ICEDIG, he documented quality management standards and methods for specimenâs digitisation workflows and rapid 3D digitisation; oversaw cloud platforms testing for data storage; researched semantic image segmentation; and built a prototype interface for a digital specimen repository. He joins the UK Catalysis Hub Team as a research associate in data management and software development.
Christina Stere; cristina.stere@manchester.ac.uk
Dr Christina completed her PhD in Chemical Engineering in 2012 from the Queenâs University Belfast under the supervision of Prof Alex Goguet and Prof Chris Hardacre on the development and application of a spatially resolved technique for the investigation of structured catalysts under real reaction conditions. She then continued as a PDRA at the same university working on plasma assisted reactions for automotive emission control coupled with developing state of the art spatially resolved techniques and DRIFT-MS system to allow in-situ studies of heterogeneous catalysts in the presence of plasma. She is currently working at the University of Manchester in the group of Prof. Chris Hardacre. Her current project looks at scalable production of high purity hydrogen through Water Gas Shift using a hybrid non-thermal plasma process and further development of in-situ DRIFTS technique for plasma reactions.