Author: The Szekely Group

Check out our new article on upcycling shrimp farming waste into solvent-resistant thin-film composite membranes. The article was selected for the cover of ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. Congratulations to Sang-Hee and Cong from the group, for putting this work together in a successful industrial collaboration with Nasser from Naqua. Special thanks to Zsolt Fulop, a visiting student from BUTE, who worked on the project during his internship. Read our interview on the project under ‘Shrimply the best composite membranes’ at KAUST Discovery.

Image credit: Hassan A. Tahini @KAUST

Congratulations to Robert McNair and Abdulaziz Alammar for passing their PhD examination at The University of Manchester. It was great to see how they grew professionally over the past few years. Rob defended his thesis on the 30th of November, and the external examiner was Prof. Geoff Kelsall from Imperial College London. Abdulaziz had his viva on the 8th of December, and the external examiner was Prof. Amir Razmjou from the University of Technology Sydney. Their hard work and dedication have paid off, congratulations! Rob started to work in London, and Abdulaziz returns to Aramco soon. Wishing you all the best for your career!

Check out our new article on bridging the interfacial gap in mixed-matrix membranes by nature-inspired design: precise molecular sieving with polymer-grafted metal–organic frameworks. The article was selected for the front cover of JMCA published by RSC. Congratulations to Levente and Rifan from the group, for putting this work together in a successful interdisciplinary collaboration with Profs Sada, Kokado (Hokkaido University, Japan), and Budd (Univeristy of Manchester, UK). I am also glad to share that this article is among the 2021 Journal of Materials Chemistry A most popular articles. 🔬🎉 Congrats to all team members!

Image credit: Xavier Pita @KAUST

We are participating in the International Conference on Sustainable Technology and Development (ICSTD), held during 31 October-2 November 2021. Gergo will talk about the role of sustainability in chemical education. The presentation is co-authored by Diana G. Oldal and Martin Gede. The topic of the presentation was triggered during our discussions while writing our textbook on Sustainable Process Engineering.

“It was a great pleasure to attend the conference. We worked a lot to summarize our findings and experiences from the textbook writing and the sustainability workshops. I believe that reaching out to a broader audience helps introduce sustainability concepts to others and helps us further understand how we can improve our teaching methods.” – said Gergo after the conference.

Rifan’s talk is about the exploitation of machine learning in sustainable development of advanced materials. The topic of the presentation was the research project that we reported in the journal of Green Chemistry. “It was a pleasure to participate in the conference and share the experience on exploiting artificial intelligence in sustainable materials development. I believe that shifting the paradigm from wet lab to wired lab is the way forward to achieve sustaianble chemical production. The implementation of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the field of sustainability is more relevant than ever before, and will continuously grow along with the advancement of supercomputing era and information technology.” – said Rifan.

We are participating in the 8th Sustainable Development Conference (SDC2021), held during 12-14 November 2021. Gergo will talk about the role of sustainability in chemical education. The presentation is co-authored by Diana G. Oldal and Martin Gede. The topic of the presentation was triggered during our discussions while writing our textbook on Sustainable Process Engineering.