Prof. Brandon Bukowski is an Assistant Professor in the department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. He holds BS and PhD degrees in Chemical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Purdue University, respectively. At Purdue he was advised by Jeffrey Greeley where he modeled the kinetics of zeolite and supported nanoparticle catalysts using Density Functional Theory and Molecular Dynamics. He performed post-doctoral research at Northwestern University under the supervision of Randall Snurr studying diffusion in nanoporous materials including metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and porous polymers. Bukowski started at Johns Hopkins University in July of 2021. He has received a DOE BES Early Career Research Award, an Amazon Research Award, a Doctoral New Investigator grant from the ACS Petroleum Research Fund, a Ralph E. Powe award from Oak Ridge Associated Universities, and a Hopkins Catalyst Award. He is the program chair for the AIChE catalysis and reaction engineering division and program chair of the Northeast Corridor Zeolite Association. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Bukowski to PodCAT!

Prof. Madelyn Ball is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at Michigan State University. Prof. Ball received her B.S. from University of New Hampshire and Ph.D in Chemical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin Madison under James Dumesic before conducting postdoctoral studies under Prof. Christopher Jones at Georgia Tech. Prof. Ball's research interests are in heterogeneous catalysis, focusing on design of well-controlled nanoparticle materials for CO2 and natural gas conversion reactions to facilitate sustainable chemical production. Her group uses catalysis and synthetic materials chemistry, operando spectroscopic techniques and well-controlled catalyst synthesis methods to elucidate active site structures under reactive environments for designing and developing improved catalysts. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Ball to PodCAT!

Prof. Christopher Paolucci is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Virginia. He is a "Double Domer" having completed his B.S. and Ph.D in Chemical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. Afterwards, he was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University. The Paolucci group focuses on computer simulations of chemical reactions at interfaces. Research areas include computational catalysis (understanding how current catalysts accelerate chemical reactions at the molecular level, and predicting the performance of potential new ones), and modeling of material synthesis and deactivation for both catalysts and other solid materials. The group uses existing quantum and classical simulation methods and also develops new hybrid methods that bridge micro and macroscopic length scales through the use of techniques such as machine learning and Monte Carlo simulation. For this work, he has received numerous awards and honors, including the NSF CAREER award and the invitation to present as an Early Career Investigator at the 2024 Gordon Research Conference on Catalysis. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Paolucci on PodCAT!