News and Events

Prof. Tessonnier visits the department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware and gives the CBE seminar.

Caitlyn finished her BS in Chemical Engineering in May and moved to Iowa City to become a Process Engineer with Procter & Gamble.

Rebecca Harmon joins the group as an undergraduate research assistant. David Gardner comes back from his co-op with Bemis. Welcome (back)!

We are now on Twitter!!! Follow us to get updates on recently published papers and more! Click here: @TessonnierGroup

John and Tom have been selected to attend the 17th International Symposium on Relations Between Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Catalysis (ISHHC 17) and the UNM PIRE summer school that will be held in Utrecht, Netherlands on July 12-16, 2015. They will present two posters on “Electrocatalytic Hydrogenation of Muconic Acid to Bio-based Monomers” and “Thermal Stability of ZSM-5 Zeolite for the Catalytic Fast Pyrolysis of Cellulose to Aromatics” at ISHHC17.

Prof. Tessonnier and collaborators of the Fritz Haber Institute publish a paper titled “Characterizing Graphitic Carbon with X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy: A Step-by-Step Approach”. The article will appear in ChemCatChem’s special issue on Carbon in the Catalysis Community.

R. Blume, D. Rosenthal, J.-P. Tessonnier, H. Li, A. Knop-Gericke, R. Schlögl, Characterizing Graphitic Carbon with X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy: A Step-by-Step Approach, ChemCatChem, 2015, 7, 2871-2881. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cctc.201500344

Prof. Tessonnier delivers an invited talk on the “Rational Design of Hydrothermally Stable Single-site Catalysts for Biomass Conversion Reactions” at the MRS-ICMAT 2015 conference in Singapore. He also chairs the session “Metal Oxide, Metal Carbide and Integrated Catalysts”

Their paper titled “Insights into the Hydrothermal Stability of ZSM-5 under Relevant Biomass Conversion Reaction Conditions” appears in ACS Catalysis. The work was performed in collaboration with Prof. Brent Shanks’ group.

D. W. Gardner, J. Huo, T. C. Hoff, R. L. Johnson, B. H. Shanks, J.-P. Tessonnier, Insights into the Hydrothermal Stability of ZSM-5 under Relevant Biomass Conversion Reaction Conditions, ACS Catal., 2015, 4418-4422. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acscatal.5b00888

Jack and John will present on “Selective Base-Catalyzed Isomerization of Glucose to Fructose” and the “Electrocatalytic Conversion of Biologically Produced Muconic Acid to a Bio-based Polymer Precursor”. Tom will present a poster on the “Thermal Stability of ZSM-5 Zeolite under Fast Pyrolysis Conditions”.

Reem Alkhalil (CBiRC-REU), Caleb Raman (CBiRC-YES), Sarah Curry (CBiRC-RET), and Clara Tibbetts (DOE-SULI) join the group for the summer. Welcome (back)!!

Angelica graduates and moves to Joliet to work for Koch Industries.

Jack’s paper on the “Kinetic and Mechanistic Study of Glucose Isomerization Using Homogeneous Organic Brønsted Base Catalysts in Water” appears in ACS Catalysis. Congratulations!

J. M. Carraher, C. N. Fleitman, J.-P. Tessonnier, Kinetic and Mechanistic Study of Glucose Isomerization Using Homogeneous Organic Brønsted Base Catalysts in Water, ACS Catal., 2015, 5, 3162-3173. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acscatal.5b00316

John has been selected as one of the 2015 Kokes Travel Award recipients to attend the 24th North American Catalysis Society (NACS) meeting in Pittsburgh, PA. At the meeting, John will give a presentation on the “Electrocatalytic Conversion of Biologically Produced Muconic Acid to a Bio-based Polymer Precursor”

New publication in the special issue of Nanotechnology on Atomic Layer Deposition in Energy, Environment, and Sustainability. This article is the result of an international collaboration with Prof. Pinna (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany), Dr. Willinger (Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Berlin, Germany), and Prof. Neri (university of Messina, Italy)

C. Marichy, N. Donato, M. Latino, M.-G. Willinger, J.-P. Tessonnier, G. Neri, N. Pinna, Gas Sensing Properties and P-Type Response of Ald Tio2 Coated Carbon Nanotubes, Nanotechnology, 2015, 26, 024004. http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0957-4484/26/2/024004

Alex and Jack’s paper on the “Selective Base-Catalyzed Isomerization of Glucose to Fructose” appears in ACS Catalysis. Congratulations!

C. Liu, J. M. Carraher, J. L. Swedberg, C. R. Herndon, C. N. Fleitman, J.-P. Tessonnier, Selective Base-Catalyzed Isomerization of Glucose to Fructose, ACS Catal., 2014, 4, 4295-4298. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cs501197w

Prof. Tessonnier delivers the Osborn Research Club Lecture at Iowa State University. [link]

Erika joins the team. Welcome!!!

Prof. Tessonnier is invited to give a talk at the 8th International Conference on Materials for Advanced Technologies (ICMAT) that will be held in Singapore from June 28 to July 3, 2015 [link].
Other invited speakers include:
Prof. Hong Yang, UIUC, USA
Prof. Tatsuya Tsukuda, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Prof. Huai Yong Zhu, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Prof. S. C. Edman Tsang, University of Oxford, UK
Prof. Yuriy Roman, MIT, USA
Prof. Sheng Dai, University of Tennessee, USA
Prof. Rongchao Jin, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Prof. Huachun Zeng, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Dr. Yugen Zhang, IBN, A*Star, Singapore
Prof. Franklin Tao, University of Notre Dame, USA
Prof. Kevin Chia-Wen Wu, National Taiwan University
Prof. Yu Han, KAUST, Saudi Arab
Prof. Yusuke Yamada, Osaka University, Japan
Prof. Steven Chuang, University of Akron, USA

Prof. Tessonnier attends the 6th International Symposium on Carbon for Catalysis held at NTNU in Trondheim, Finland. He delivers a talk on “Functionalized Graphene Sheets for the Selective Dispersion of Polyoxometalates in Nonpolar Solvents” and chairs the session “Carbon for New Energy Technologies I”

Prof. Tessonnier visits Prof. Dmitry Murzin’s group at Abo Akademi University (Turku, Finland) and gives a seminar on “Challenges and Opportunities for the Conversion of Biomass to Renewable Chemicals using Carbon-based and Carbon-supported Catalysts”.

Our group publishes the first review article on “Functional Carbons and Carbon Nanohybrids for the Catalytic Conversion of Biomass to Renewable Chemicals in the Condensed Phase“. The paper will be part of a special issue on Carbon in Catalysis. Other invited authors include Teresa J. Bandosz (USA), Gabriele Centi (Italy), De Chen (Norway), Morinobu Endo (Japan), Jose L. Figueiredo (Portugal), Gary L. Haller (USA), Cuong Pham-Huu (France), Zinfer R. Ismagilov (Russia), Oleksiy Khavrychenko (Ukraine), Laura Prati (Italy), Ljubisa Radovic (USA and Chili), Daniel E. Resasco (USA), Philippe Serp (France), Magdalena Titirici (UK), Da-Wei Wang (Austrialia)

J. Matthiesen, T. Hoff, C. Liu, C. Pueschel, R. Rao, J.-P. Tessonnier, Functional Carbons and Carbon Nanohybrids for the Catalytic Conversion of Biomass to Renewable Chemicals in the Condensed Phase, Chin. J. Catal., 2014, 35, 842-855. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1872-2067(14)60122-4

Clara Tibbetts (SULI), Jason Painter (CBiRC REU), and Sarah Curry (CBiRC RET) join the group for the summer. Welcome!!

Prof. Tessonnier has been selected to co-chair the session “Catalytic Processing of Fossil and Biorenewable Feedstocks: Chemicals I” and chair “Catalytic Processing of Fossil and Biorenewable Feedstocks: Chemicals IV” at the AIChE Annual Meeting 2014.

Jack Carraher joins the group as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Jack brings 5 years of experience in catalysis and reaction kinetics.

Kanchana graduates today! Congratulations!! We are very proud of your achievements.

We are very proud to announce that 7 members of our group have been selected for internships/co-ops:
Angelica Iacobucci: internship with Koch Industries, Summer 2014
Caitlyn Herndon: internship with Cargill, Summer 2014
Jordan Swedberg: internship with LyondellBasell, Summer 2014
Boniface Mkini: co-op with Bemis, Summer-Fall 2014
Rachel Wiltgen: co-op with Cargill, Spring-Summer 2015
Chelsea Fleitman: co-op with Cargill, Spring-Summer 2015
David Gardner: co-op with Bemis, Spring-Summer 2015

Chelsea has been selected to be part of CBiRC’s REU program this summer. Well done!!

Alex receives a $10,000 grant by CBiRC’s Technical Leadership Team for his Student-led Research Project entitled “Hands-on Learning about the Electron Microscopy and Other Characterization Techniques at UNM – A Week Long Mini Symposium”. The mini-symposium will be organized together with Dr. Hien Pham (UNM). It is scheduled to take place at the University of New Mexico in June 2014.

Chelsea Fleitman joins the group as an undergraduate research assistant. Welcome to the team!

Charles Pueschel joins the group as our first DOE SULI student (Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship). Welcome!

Prof. Tessonnier gives a seminar entitled “Challenges and Opportunities for the Conversion of Biomass to Renewable Chemicals”. The talk is part of ISU’s Department of Chemistry Nanoscale Seminar Series organized by Prof. Javier Vela.

John and Tom were selected to receive the Baxter and James R. Katzer graduate fellowships. Congratulations John and Tom!

Radhika Rao and Thomas Hoff join the group as graduate students. Radhika will be working on the hydrogenation of biorenewable chemicals. Tom joins a collaboration with Prof. Robert Brown’s group. He will be working on the zeolite-catalyzed fast pyrolysis of cellulosic and algal biomass.

Caitlyn, Kanchana and Jude are member of ISU’s Cardinal Keys, an honorary “recognizing outstanding leadership, service, scholarship, and character at Iowa State University since 1926.”
http://www.stuorg.iastate.edu/cardinalkey/homepage.php

Sandra Greenwood, Kanchana Perera, Jude Larenzie, Boniface Mkini, and Rachel Wiltgen join the group as undergraduate research assistants. Welcome to the team!

Shelly Vanyo and Amra Softic join the group in the framework of CBiRC’s RET (Research Experience for High School Teachers) and YES (Young Engineers and Scientists) programs, respectively. They are going to spend 6 weeks in the lab this summer in order to become familiar with our research and acquire new skills.

Prof. Tessonnier has been invited to join the scientific advisory committee of the 6th International Symposium on Carbon for Catalysis (CarboCat VI). Other members include:
Xinhe Bao, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, CAS, China
Gabriele Centi, University of Messina, Italy
Krijn P. de Jong, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Morinobu Endo, Shinshu University, Japan
Gary L. Haller, Yale University, USA
Cuong Pham-Huu, CNRS, France
Zinfer R. Ismagilov, Boreskov Institute of Catalysis, Russia
Philippe Serp, Toulouse University, France
Daniel E. Resasco, University of Oklahoma, USA
Robert Schlögl, Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Germany
Dangsheng Su, Institute of Metal Research, CAS, China
Fei Wei, Tsinghua University, China

The symposium will take place in Trondheim, Norway on June 22-25, 2014. Profs. De Chen and Magnus Rønning of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) will organize this edition.

Caitlyn has been selected by Cargill to perform a co-op during the summer and fall 2013. She will join our group again in spring 2014. Congratulations Caitlyn! Enjoy your time at Cargill.

Profs. Robert Brown and J.-P. Tessonnier were awarded a grant from the Iowa Energy Center to work together on the catalyzed pyrolysis of biomass. The project is going to start on July 1, 2013.

Angelica and Jordan have been selected over more than 100 applicants to be part of CBiRC’s REU program this summer. Well done!!

Alex receives a $6,000 grant from CBiRC’s Technical Leadership Team for his Student-led Research Project “Rapid, High Throughput Identification and Quantification of Carbohydrates and Their Derivatives Using UPLC-PDA-ELSD”. This work will be performed in collaboration with the Okerlund and Jarboe groups at Iowa State University.

J.-P. Tessonnier has been selected to co-chair the sessions “Catalytic Biomass Conversion to Chemicals I & II” (Session 16002) of the AIChE Annual Meeting 2013.

Prof. Tessonnier becomes an Associate Scientist of the US Department of Energy Ames Laboratory.

Angelica Iacobucci, Jonathan Ellis and David Gardner join the group as undergraduate research assistants. Welcome to the team.

J.-P. Tessonnier has been selected to co-chair the session “Catalytic Processing of Fossil and Biorenewable Feedstocks: Chemicals” (Session 20030) of the AIChE Annual Meeting 2013.

J.-P. Tessonnier has been selected to chair the session “Fundamentals of Supported Catalysis” (Session 20026) of the AIChE Annual Meeting 2013.

Prof. Tessonnier is featured as a “Mover & Shaker” in The Catalyst Review, a monthly magazine targeted to industry and experts in catalysis. The interview includes a whole page in the November 2012 issue. The Catalyst Review previously featured renowned “Movers & Shakers” in the field, such as Dion Vlachos (University of Delaware), Manos Mavrikakis (University of Wisconsin-Madison) or Suljo Linic (University of Michigan).
http://www.catalystgrp.com/php/tcgr_catalystreview.php

Alex has been selected to become the third James R. Katzer fellow. Congratulations Alex!!