EES Catalysis Blog

Dr. Mim Rahimi is a Kaspar J. Willam Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Houston (UH), where he also holds an affiliate appointment with the Materials Science and Engineering Program. Before joining UH in 2021, he was a postdoctoral associate at MIT working with Prof. T. Alan Hatton. He earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Penn State University in 2017 under the supervision of Prof. Bruce Logan. Dr. Rahimi’s research group develops electrochemical processes for separation and sustainability applications, with particular emphasis on carbon management, resource recovery, and environmental remediation. His work has been recognized through the 2024 NSF CAREER Award, DOE’s National EnergyTech University Prize, and the UH-Chevron Energy Transition Innovation Challenge. He was selected for the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists (AAEES) 40 Under 40 Recognition Program in 2025 and received the AAEES 2025 Excellence in Environmental Engineering and Science Competition Award. He also received the University of Houston 2024–2025 Faculty Research Excellence Award and the 2025–2026 Early Innovator Award. Most recently, Dr. Rahimi was selected as an Emerging Investigator in Electrochemistry by ACS Electrochemistry.

Read Mim’s Emerging Investigators article titled “Electrochemical Reactive Carbon Capture: What Has Been Achieved and What Remains to Be Explored” and find out more about him in the interview below:

What do you see as the most significant insights or conclusions from your Perspective article?

One of our main goals was to provide a more balanced view of reactive carbon capture (RCC). Much of the early discussion around RCC has focused on its thermodynamic advantage, particularly the possibility of bypassing energy-intensive CO2 desorption and compression. That advantage is real, but our analysis shows that it needs to be considered alongside kinetic and mass-transport limitations that currently prevent us from fully realizing that potential. We tried to identify where those limitations come from and, more importantly, what research directions could help move RCC closer to its theoretical promise.

What aspect of your work excites you most right now?

What excites me most is working across a fairly wide range of technology readiness levels. We do fundamental research to understand the underlying chemistry and electrochemistry, but we also try to translate those ideas into practical systems, including larger-scale demonstrations. I particularly enjoy the feedback loop between the two. Practical implementation often reveals questions that we would not necessarily identify at the fundamental level, while fundamental understanding helps us design better systems.

Which profession would you choose if you weren’t a scientist?

I would probably be a movie director. During my undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral years, photography and some beginner-level cinematography were always side interests of mine. I really enjoyed the creative process of turning an idea into something visual and telling a story through images. Directing a movie always seemed like a fascinating combination of creativity, storytelling, and bringing many different pieces together.

What one piece of career advice would you share with other early career scientists?

I would say follow the questions you are genuinely passionate about, while staying open to learning and adapting. There is a lot to gain from the experience of more senior researchers, but every generation of scientists also has to become comfortable with new tools and ways of working. Right now, I think developing good AI literacy is part of that. Understanding how to use these tools thoughtfully, rather than simply ignoring them or following every trend, will increasingly be an important part of doing research well.

Dr Yanwei Lum obtained his BEng degree in Materials Science and Engineering at Imperial College London in 2012. He then received his PhD degree in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley in 2018 under Prof. Joel W. Ager III. This was followed by a PostDoctoral stint at the University of Toronto with Prof. Edward H. Sargent. He joined the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) as a Presidential Young Assistant Professor in 2021. His research interests include electrocatalysis for CO2/NO3- reduction, electroorganic reactions and hydrogen storage. His research has been recognized by awards such as Waterloo Institute of Nanotechnology (WIN) 2025 Rising Star Award, MIT TR35 Innovators Under 35 (Asia Pacific) and ASEAN-ROK Next Innovator Award.

Read Yanwei’s Emerging Investigators article titled “A reversed gas diffusion electrode enables collection of high purity gas products from CO₂ electroreduction” and find out more about him in the interview below:

How has your research evolved from your first article to this most recent one?

My research has evolved from understanding fundamental electrochemical reaction mechanisms to using those insights to designing more effective reactor systems. In my early work, I focused on uncovering how catalyst surfaces influence reaction pathways and selectivity in electrochemical CO₂ reduction. Over time, I became increasingly interested in the broader challenge of reactor system engineering. Our recent work in EES Catalysis tackles an important challenge in CO₂ reduction, which is how to collect gas products at high purity without mixing with the reactant. That being said, the overarching goal has remained the same: developing efficient and cost-effective systems for sustainable chemical manufacturing.

What aspect of your work excites you most right now?

What excites me most is the growing ability to directly observe and control reaction pathways at electrified interfaces. For many years, electrocatalytic reactions were often treated as “black boxes,” where we could measure products but had limited insight into how individual reaction steps occurred. Today, advances in operando characterization, isotopic labeling, and computational methods allow us to probe these mechanisms with unprecedented detail. I am particularly excited by the opportunity to explore the development of toolkits and methodologies to uncover new insights into catalytic mechanisms at play.

Which profession would you choose if you weren’t a scientist?

If I were not a scientist, I would probably be a science journalist. There is a need to translate complex scientific ideas into stories that are accessible and engaging to broader audiences. Science journalism plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between researchers and society, helping people understand not only what discoveries are made, but also why they matter. In this way, we can inspire curiosity, inform decision-making and highlight the human side of research.

What one piece of career advice would you share with other early career scientists?

Focus on developing strong expertise and technical capabilities rather than chasing trends. Scientific fields evolve rapidly, and research directions that seem fashionable today may look very different in a few years. In my opinion, a strong foundation in fundamentals, combined with the ability to ask important questions and think independently, is the most important.

Professor Marc Porosoff is an Associate Professor of Chemical and Sustainability Engineering at the University of Rochester. He received his BS in 2009 and MS in 2010, both in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University. In 2015, he completed his PhD in Chemical Engineering at Columbia University under the supervision of Prof. Jingguang G. Chen. He then worked as a National Research Council sponsored postdoctoral fellow at the Naval Research Laboratory on the seawater to fuel project. Porosoff has been awarded funding by the Office of Naval Research, American Chemical Society-Petroleum Research Fund, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy. In 2026, he was appointed to the Early Career Board of the journal, EES Catalysis. At Rochester, Porosoff investigates relationships between chemical reactivity and catalyst electronic/structure properties through catalyst synthesis, in situ analytical techniques, and reactor studies. He is also working on new mechanisms of catalyst representation and energy transfer to accelerate development and implementation of carbon-neutral processes in the 21^st century. Porosoff is also a co-host of PodCAT, a catalysis podcast that helps early-career researchers navigate academia.

Read Marc’s Emerging Investigator article titled “Leveraging and understanding exotherms in tandem catalysts with in situ luminescence thermometry” and find out more about him in the interview below:

How has your research evolved from your first article to this most recent one?

At the beginning of my independent research career at the University of Rochester, I really didn’t have the confidence to pursue new and “risky” research directions. I started off by following a similar approach to my PhD and postdoc, which was to develop an understanding of catalyst structure-property relationships by combining in situ analytical techniques and reactor experiments. In one of my group’s first articles, we led a study on scaling up a potassium-promoted molybdenum carbide catalyst for the reverse water-gas shift reaction to understand catalyst scalability and lifetime (which coincidentally was published in Energy and Environmental Science). However, as my career has evolved, my group’s questions have shifted from understanding materials to developing approaches that deepen our understanding of catalytic systems. The luminescence thermometry work (published in EES Catalysis) is a good example because instead of designing a new catalyst, we are probing nuanced effects of surface temperatures that are known to affect reaction kinetics but have not yet been leveraged to more precisely control reaction networks and tandem reactions.

What aspect of your work excites you most right now?

The most exciting part of my group’s research is leveraging new tools. It has been over 100 years since the Haber-Bosch process for synthesizing ammonia was developed, but the catalyst development and deployment paradigm is more or less unchanged. We are working at the intersection of AI and reactor design to modernize catalyst discovery and development. My group has shown that representing catalysts with the text of synthesis procedures and reaction conditions, instead of typical computational descriptors, can be used to make valid predictions and discover new catalysts. We are also working on Joule-heated reactors, which will help enable distributed deployment of chemical conversion technologies rather than relying on entrenched infrastructure. The tools we are working on may also help with reproducibility in heterogeneous catalysis via text-based representation. This is because the representation is the text-based procedure itself, so when two labs get different results, the discrepancy can be localized to specific variables that may not be reported in publications, such as chemical lot numbers, humidity, and thermocouple placement. Therefore, our use of language-based representation can potentially transform frustrating outcomes into quantifiable values and actionable procedures.

Which profession would you choose if you weren’t a scientist?

A chef. I did an internship in a kitchen in high school. Cooking is well aligned with research because there is an element of creativity, hypothesis generation, and many opportunities for improvement (via failure). You also get a tangible result in the end, but the satisfaction and results from cooking are appreciated on a much shorter timescale than in research.

What one piece of career advice would you share with other early career scientists?

This may seem like a strange answer, but don’t take everyone’s advice. Over your career you’ll get an enormous amount of advice, and some of it will be contradictory. Two of your mentors may have vastly different opinions about how to approach research or run a lab. There are a lot of pathways to becoming a successful scientist, so my advice is to trust your gut and listen to what resonates with you. Let your intuition guide your decisions, rather than overhauling your research approach every time someone senior gives you advice.

Longsheng Zhang is an associate professor in the School of Chemical and Material Engineering at Jiangnan University, China. He received his Ph.D. in material science from Fudan University, China. His research focuses on the rational design and precise synthesis of conjugated coordination polymers for applications in renewable energy conversion including water electrolysis and electrochemical nitrogen fixation.

Longsheng also recently joined EES Catalysis as an Early Career Board.

Read Longsheng’s Emerging Investigators article “A conjugated coordination polymer enables efficient proton supply on the platinum surface for alkaline hydrogen evolution electrocatalysis”

The paper shows that Pt nanoparticles supported on conjugated coordination polymers with abundant single-atom metals sites enable efficient proton supply for enhanced alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction.

Find out more about Longsheng in the following interview:

How has your research evolved from your first article to this most recent one?

My early research mainly focused on developing advanced methods for the preparation of electrocatalysts. Over time, my research has expanded to integrating in-situ characterization with theoretical simulations to investigate the dynamic behaviors of electrocatalysts under actual working conditions.

What aspect of your work excites you most right now?

What excites me the most is combining the theoretical and experimental verification in model systems to unravel the electrocatalytic mechanisms, which may provide helpful guidelines for designing high-performance electrocatalysts.

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?

I have indeed sometimes reflected on this question. If I were not a scientist, I would have found my way into the classroom as a teacher, introducing chemistry to the young.

What one piece of career advice would you share with other early career scientists?

As an early career scientist myself, I often remind myself that this path is rarely a solo journey. One piece of career advice I would share is: give and receive support when needed to make this journey more resilient and rewarding.

How do you feel about EES Catalysis as a place to publish research on this topic?

We are truly honored to publish our work in EES Catalysis, a high-quality journal renowned for its emphasis on catalysis and energy. The rigorous yet efficient review process and the professional editorial team significantly enhance the scientific impact of published work.