
Organized by Tianjin University, Tianjin Normal University, Xinjiang University, Haihe Laboratory of Sustainable Chemical Transformations, Nature Chemical Engineering, Nature Energy, Nature Catalysis, Nature Sustainability and Nature.
Achieving a world with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions requires the chemical industry to develop processes that balance efficiency, environmental impact, scalability and economic viability. Advancements in chemical process design, system optimization, and sustainable resource utilization are key to overcoming these challenges and accelerating progress toward a net-zero future.
This two-day, single-session conference will explore the role of chemical processes in achieving net-zero emissions through a series of talks and panel discussions led by leading international scientists. We aim to foster an open and collaborative atmosphere, encouraging the exchange of ideas among researchers working on the development and assessment of key chemical processes. Topics will provide a holistic overview of chemical process design, including the production of green hydrogen and alternative fuels, sustainable reaction engineering and separation processes, and carbon capture and utilization, with a focus on their role in supporting a sustainable, net-zero future.


Event details
Speakers

André Bardow
ETH Zurich, Switzerland
André Bardow has been full professor for Energy and Process Systems Engineering at ETH Zurich since 2020. Previously, he was a professor and head of the Institute of Technical Thermodynamics at RWTH Aachen University (2010-2020) and associate professor at TU Delft (2007-2010). He was also in part-time director of the Institute for Energy and Climate Research (IEK-10) at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany (2017-2022). He was a visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara (2015/16). He earned his Ph.D. degree at RWTH Aachen University.
Prof. Bardow is a fellow of the Royal Chemical Society and chaired the Technical Committee for Thermodynamics of VDI – The Association of German Engineers from 2016 to 2024. He received the Recent Innovative Contribution Award of the CAPE-Working Party of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE) in 2019, and the PSE Model-Based Innovation (MBI) Prize by Process Systems Enterprise in 2018. He was the first recipient of the Covestro Science Award. He received the Arnold-Eucken-Award of the VDI-Society for Chemical Engineering (GVC) and was recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate in 2024 . He is the recipient of RWTH’s “FAMOS für Familie” award for family-friendly leadership, and of teaching awards at RWTH and TU Delft.

Sai Chen
Tianjin University, China

Ib Chorkendorff
Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
Ib Chorkendorff is Professor in Heterogeneous Catalysis at DTU-Physics. He earned his PhD in 1985 Odense University Denmark, and after a post-doc at University of Pittsburgh, USA, he was employed in 1987 at DTU where he became full professor in 1999. From 2005-2016 he was director of Danish National Research Foundation Center for Individual Nanoparticle Functionality (CINF) and from 2016 he has been director of The Villum Center for the Science of Sustainable Fuels and Chemicals (V-SUSTAIN). He was elected Fellow of The Academy for Technical Sciences in 2001 and member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in 2018. He has authored or coauthored more than 460 scientific papers, 23 patents and one textbook “Concepts of Modern Catalysis and Kinetics”. He has since 2017 been listed as a Highly Cited Researcher (ISI) (top 1% in the field). Ib Chorkendorff’s research activities focus on finding new catalysts for improving sustainable energy production/conversion and for environmental protection. He is co-founder of three start-up companies RENCAT APS, HPNOW APS and Spectroinlets APS and has received numerous awards, latest the Villum Kann Rassmussen Annual Award (2021), which is the most prestigious award in Denmark and in 2022 The Eni Award: Energy Frontiers Prize.

Christos Maravelias
Princeton University, USA
Christos Maravelias is the Chair of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and the Anderson Family Professor in Energy and the Environment at Princeton University. His research interests lie in the general area of process and energy systems engineering and optimization. Specifically, he is studying production planning and scheduling, supply chain optimization, and energy systems synthesis and analysis with emphasis on renewable energy technologies. He has authored a research monograph on Chemical Production Scheduling and co-authored more than 200 journal articles. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the David Smith and Outstanding Young Researcher awards from the CAST Division of AIChE, the Sustainable Engineering Forum research Award from AIChE, and the Production and Operations Management Society Applied Research Challenge Award.
Group website: https://cbe.princeton.edu/people/christos-maravelias

Andrew Livingston
Queen Mary University of London, QMUL, UK
Andrew Livingston (AGL) is from Taranaki NZ, and studied Chemical Engineering at University of Canterbury. He then worked at an NZ food processing company followed by a PhD at Cambridge UK, and in 1990 joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College, serving as HoD 2008-2016. He leads a research group of 20 PhD students and Post-Docs, with interests in membranes for molecular separations in liquids and the development of chemical processes using these membranes. Awards include the Junior Moulton Medal, Cremer and Warner Medal, and Underwood Medal of IChemE, and Silver Medal of Royal Academy of Engineering. AGL was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2006 and was elected FRS in 2022.
From October 2016 he was the inaugural Director of the Barrer Centre at Imperial College, and from 1 July 2017 was the interim academic lead, from 1 Jan 2019- May 2019 the interim director, of the new Rosalind Franklin Institute, set up with a £100M investment from the UK Government to carry out ground-breaking research at the interface of engineering, physical sciences and life sciences. In 1 November 2019 he joined Queen Mary University of London as the Vice-Principal (Research and Innovation).
In 1996, AGL founded Membrane Extraction Technology, a spin-out company which evolved to manufacture solvent stable Organic Solvent Nanofiltration (OSN) membranes for molecular separations in organic liquids. On 1 March 2010 MET was acquired by Evonik Industries of Essen, Germany, and continues in business as Evonik MET Ltd., a part of the Evonik Fibres and Membranes Business. In 2018 with colleague Dr Piers Gaffney AGL founded Exactmer Limited, based in Dagenham East, London and dedicated to the production of exact polymer molecules including oligonucleotides, peptides and synthetic polymers such as PEG, using Nanostar Sieving technology.

Bert Sels
KU Leuven, Belgium

Laura Torrente-Murciano
University of Cambridge, UK

Jennifer Wilcox
University of Pennsylvania, USA
Jennifer Wilcox is Presidential Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, with a home at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and the School of Engineering and Applied Science. At Penn, she oversees the Clean Energy Conversions Lab.
Wilcox also works with Isometric as their Chief Scientist and is a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, where she leverages her expertise to help accelerate policy support and investments in research, development, and deployment of industrial decarbonization and carbon removal solutions in order to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Most recently, Wilcox served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management at the Department of Energy.
Wilcox’s research takes aim at the nexus of energy and the environment, developing both mitigation and adaptation strategies to minimize negative climate impacts associated with society’s dependence on fossil fuels. This work carefully examines the role of carbon management and opportunities therein that could assist in preventing 2° C warming by 2100. Carbon management includes a mix of technologies spanning from the direct removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to its capture from industrial, utility-scale exhaust streams, followed by utilization or reliable storage of carbon dioxide on a timescale and magnitude that will have a positive impact on our current climate change crisis.
Funding for her research is primarily sourced through the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy and the private sector. She has served on a number of committees including the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society to assess carbon capture methods and impacts on climate. She is currently a member of the Energy & Environmental Science Journal Editorial Board. She is the author of the first textbook on carbon capture and, most recently, the CDR Primer. In 2023, she was named one of the TIME 100 Climate.

Sui Zhang
National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore

Tao Zhang
Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Nanfeng Zheng
Xiamen University, China