Congratulations to the 2024 San Francisco Section Daniel Cubicciotti Student Award Recipient, Justin C. Bui of the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The award recognizes his outstanding work on developing continuum models, understanding the impact of transport and catalysis in bipolar ion-conducting polymer membranes, and elucidating the influence of the microenvironment on the activity and selectivity for the electrochemical reduction of CO2.
Justin C. Bui
Justin C. Bui is a fifth year PhD candidate at UC Berkeley and researcher in the Liquid Sunlight Alliance U.S. Department of Energy Hub at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Justin earned his BS in Chemical Engineering from Columbia University, working with Prof. Daniel Esposito to fabricate membrane-less electrolyzers for sustainable hydrogen production from seawater. At Berkeley, Justin’s research with Prof. Alexis Bell and Dr. Adam Weber focuses on the use of continuum-level theory to understand the impact of transport and catalysis in bipolar ion-conducting polymer membranes, as well as to elucidate the influence of the catalytic microenvironment on the activity and selectivity of carbon dioxide (CO2) electroreduction to value-added chemical products. Throughout his PhD, Justin worked closely with experimentalists to drastically advance the development of carbon capture and conversion devices. Justin received prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) research fellowships. Outside of the lab, Justin developed inclusive, experiential curricula to introduce K-12 students to electrochemistry. He will soon start as a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology, working with Prof. Karthish Manthiram to develop electrochemical reactors capable of oxidatively activating nitrogen to make plastics and fertilizer precursors directly from air. (more…)
