Join the Wilmer Lab!

Christopher E. Wilmer

Principal Investigator

Selected Awards and Honors
2014 Invited speaker to Google's Solve-for-X annual meeting
2013 AIChE Computational Molecular Science & Engineering Graduate Student Award
2012 Named to the Forbes Top 30-Under-30 list in Energy Innovation
2012 Distinguished Graduate Researcher Award, Chem. Engineering, Northwestern Univ.
2012 ACS Excellence in Graduate Research Award, Energy & Fuels
2012 Invitation to Ring the Closing Bell of the NASDAQ Stock Exchange
2012 Kleiner Perkins Clean Tech Innovation Prize
2012 Grand Prize, Rice Business Plan Competition
2011 NSF International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge Winner
2011 Dow Sustainability Innovation Student Challenge Award
2011 Perkins Coie Innovative Minds Award

For full CV click here.

Current Members

 

Alec Kaija

Graduate Student

Alec is determining the theoretical performance limits of MOFs. Previously, he studied Chemical Engineering and Spanish as an undergraduate in the International Engineering Program at the University of Rhode Island. While living in Spain he spent time working at a biopharmaceutical CMO and, upon return, completed a design project for mapping the neutron flux profile of the nuclear research reactor at RINSC.

Jenna Gustafson

Graduate Student

Jenna is designing a universal gas sensor (i.e., an "electronic nose"). She received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University at Buffalo in 2014. She also spent a summer doing research at Stony Brook University, where she worked on synthesizing conductive polymers for energy storage applications.

Hasan Babaei

Post Doctoral Fellow

Hasan is modeling thermal transport phenomena in MOFs. He was recently a visiting scholar in Mechanical Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Auburn University, he worked on thermal transport in nanostructure-enhanced phase change materials. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical engineering at the Iran University of Science and Technology and the University of Tehran, respectively.

 

Blake Dube

Undergraduate Researcher

Blake is mapping the theoretical limits of oxygen storage. He is a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Pittsburgh, with a major in Chemical Engineering. Blake was awarded the Brackenridge Fellowship to continue his research with the goal of shedding new light on gas storage.

Kutay Sezginel

Graduate Student

Kutay is interested in industrial applications of MOFs. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Koç Universtiy in Istanbul focusing on methane storage in metal-organic frameworks.

Paul Boone

Lead Software Developer

Paul Boone comes to Pitt with over 16 years of experience in private industry transforming ideas into actual software. He is adept at guiding non-technical people to concrete next steps, but his software and technical experience is extensive and spans data warehousing, database design, optimization and management, data center operations, cloud devops and scaling on AWS, frontend and backend web application frameworks and linux for embedded devices.​

 

Arash Nouri

Graduate Student

He received B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology (SUT). Now, he is getting a PhD in Computational Modeling & Simulation (CMS) where he works on turbulent flow modeling, and a M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering.​

Yechuan Zhang

Graduate Student

Yechuan is interested in petrochemical industrial applications of MOFs. He received his B.S. degree majoring in Oil and Gas Storage and Transportation Engineering. Now, he is pursuing his M.S. degree in Petroleum Engineering. He believes that there is a significant potential in using MOFs to separate impurities in oil and natural gas.

Conor Peytom

Undergraduate Researcher

Conor is a third year undergraduate student, seeking his B.S. in Chemical Engineering. In addition to his research, Conor is in the midst of a co-op with a Pittsburgh based process engineering firm, Venture Engineering & Construction.

 

Alumni

Natalie Isenberg

Undergraduate Researcher

In the WilmerLab, Natalie studied quasicrystals and MOF-sensor arrays using grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations to predict gas adsorption on the sensors.

Katelyn Dray

Undergraduate Researcher

In the WilmerLab, Katelyn designed a series of DNA-origami based drug-delivery "tubes" and calculated drug diffusivity in them using molecular simulations.

Tianyi Feng

Graduate Student

Tianyi received her B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Dalian University of Technology in China. Tianyi was twice awarded the National Scholarship as an undergraduate student, and was the leader of a National Undergraduate Training Program for Innovation named "the synthesis and flocculation properties of polymerized silicate containing magnesium sulfate, aluminum sulfate and ferric sulfate (PSMAF)".