Author: The Szekely Group

Award-Winning Research on Engineering Sustainable Protein Membranes from Corn 🌽

Our research group recently published a new open-access paper in SusMat, detailing our progress in replacing fossil-based plastics in industrial separation materials with sustainable alternatives.

🎬 Watch the video abstract for the project on YouTube.

Our solution utilizes zein, a biodegradable protein sourced from corn industry byproducts. By replacing traditional toxic chemicals with green solvents like acetic acid and ethyl lactate, we successfully engineered solvent-resistant nanofiltration membranes. In our study, we demonstrated that these membranes can effectively filter carcinogenic impurities out of pharmaceutical ingredients.

This work relied on critical interdisciplinary collaboration with the Habuchi Lab. By using single-molecule tracking with quantum dots, we were able to observe the real-time dynamics of the membrane forming at the microscopic level.

A huge congratulations to the paper’s first author, Claudia Oviedo, who won the KAUST BESE Interdisciplinary Collaboration Award for spearheading this project!

📖 Read the full open-access paper on SusMat

📰 Check out the feature story on KAUST Discovery

Proud supervisor moment! 🎓

I am proud to announce that Aron has successfully defended his PhD thesis! Watching his growth over the years has been great as a supervisor. His thesis titled Data-driven and Multiscale Systems Design of Sustainable Nanofiltration Processes, is a significant step forward for the digitalization of the field of membranes. By integrating data science with multiscale modeling, he has developed innovative ways to make challenging molecular separations significantly more energy-efficient in a wide range of industrial domains.

One of the most unique aspects of this defense was its diversity—not just in thought, but in geography. With committee members spanning three different time zones, this was a truly international collaboration. My sincere thanks to Profs Suzana Nunes and Carlos Grande from KAUST, and Gonzalo Guillén-Gosálbez from ETH Zurich for their invaluable insights and for coordinating across borders to make this defense such a success.

I can’t wait to see the impact Aron continues to make on the world stage.

It’s been a pleasure to be part of the European Commission’s E-TANDEM project under the Horizon Europe program. If you’re interested in our contribution, read the post and interview below. 🚀 Our first joint publication about membranes for e-fuels is on the way by Áron, Lana and Martin! Exciting times… ♻️

Learn about the project here.

Read the interview here: here.

Our paper just received the Advanced Membranes Best Paper Award! 🏆 Congratulations to Gergo and Nawader for the nice article, which you can read here. Download the dataset from the OSN Database.

We identified the most important solvent parameters affecting solute rejection in membranes. 🚀  We reported a dataset with 407 solutes in 11 solvents, and utilized a graph neural network to predict solute rejection. Explainable artificial intelligence helped us reveal and visualize the underlying effects of atoms and functional groups altering the rejection. 👨‍💻

Congratulations to Martin Gede on completing an excellent PhD thesis titled Advancing Sustainable Photoredox Catalysis with Polymers of Intrinsic Microporosity: from Catalyst Design to Continuous–Flow Process!  Many thanks to their committee members, namely Profs Javier Ruiz-Martinez and Monika Chodasiewicz from KAUST and Prof Timothy Noël from the University of Amsterdam. 🙏 

It has been a true pleasure working with you throughout this journey, and your hard work and dedication are evident in the depth and quality of your research. You are not only a brilliant researcher but also a great colleague, and I have thoroughly enjoyed supervising your PhD research. I have no doubt that your future career will be filled with success and exciting opportunities. Wishing you all the best in your next steps. I’m confident you’ll continue to make a meaningful impact! 🚀

Martin’s thesis was selected as the best chemical engineering thesis in 2024 and was nominated for the best PhD thesis in the Physical Science and Engineering Division at KAUST. 💡 Congratulations!