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Yuriy Román
Robert T. Haslam (1911) Professor of Chemical Engineering
​Principal Investigator

yroman@mit.edu | ChemE Faculty Page
Office: 66-558b
Phone: 617-253-7090
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Professor Yuriy Román was born and raised in Mexico City, Mexico. He is currently the Robert T. Haslam (1911) Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, where he has been part of the faculty since 2010. Yuriy earned his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 2002 and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2008, where he worked with Prof. James Dumesic on biomass conversion. After completing his doctoral studies, he spent two years at Caltech as a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Mark E. Davis, focusing on the synthesis of zeolites. The core of his research lies at the interface of heterogeneous catalysis and materials science, where he combines catalyst design, kinetic studies, and reaction engineering study the chemical transformation of molecules with a strong focus on sustainability. Yuriy has been honored with several awards recognizing his contributions to science and engineering. These include the NSF CAREER Award, the ACS Early Career in Catalysis Award, and the AIChE Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division Young Investigator Award. More recently, he received the Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis and the International Catalysis Award. Outside the lab, Yuriy enjoys basketball, running, and cooking.
Alina Haverty
​Administrative Assistant

haverty@mit.edu
Office: 66-542
Phone: 617-253-4533
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Mostapha Dakhchoune
Postdoc

mdakhcho@mit.edu
Office: 66-008
Phone: 617-253-0848
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Mostapha received his B.Sc. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Florence, Italy, in 2013. He then moved to Bologna (Italy) to pursue his M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering at the Alma Mater University of Bologna. Mostapha did his PhD at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland) under the supervision of Prof. Kumar Varoon Agrawal where he worked on the development of two-dimensional inorganic membranes for gas separation. He spent one year in Zurich (Switzerland) working in the R&D department of a startup that aimed at separating propane/propylene mixtures with MOF membranes. Mostapha joined the Román Group as a Schmidt Science Fellow on October 2022, where he is currently focusing on the electric field promotion of catalysis and solvation effect under two-dimensional materials.
Bowei Liu
Postdoc

boweiliu@mit.edu
Office: 66-008
Phone: 617-253-0848
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Bowei is originally from Bengbu, China. He received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of San Francisco in 2015. He then moved to Syracuse University for pursuing graduate studies and received his M.S. in 2019 and Ph.D. in 2023 under the mentorship of Professor Jesse Bond. Through the graduate period, he has worked on mechanistic studies of methyl ketone oxidation over supported vanadium oxides for biomass upgrading, and the exploration of hydrothermal gasification reactions in production of renewable natural gas for harvesting energy from sewage sludge. Bowei's current research will pursue developing high performance PHA plastics from biomass-derived lactones.
Rachita Rana
Postdoc

rrana@mit.edu
Office: 66-008
Phone: 617-253-0848
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Rachita is from India, where she earned her bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Banasthali University. She then moved to Canada, pursuing her M.Sc. at the University of Saskatchewan, where she worked on catalyst design for gas oil hydrotreating and conducted experiments at the Canadian Light Source. Subsequently, Rachita moved to the United States for her Ph.D. in chemical engineering at UC Davis. Supervised by Professors Kulkarni (UCD) and Simon Bare (SLAC), her project involved both computational and experimental catalysis. In addition to DFT calculations, her research included atomically dispersed catalyst synthesis in the Gates Lab at UC Davis and beamline experiments at SSRL. Primarily, her Ph.D. work involved developing QuantEXAFS. Later, she interned at Stanford in the Cargnello group and at SLAC, focusing on experimental testing of catalysts for propene epoxidation. In January 2024, Rachita joined the Román Group, where she is working on device fabrication and testing, with a particular emphasis on exploring the electric field promotion of catalysis.
Marcos Garcia Farpon
Postdoc

mgfarpon@mit.edu
Office: 66-008
Phone: 617-253-0848
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Marcos was born in Oviedo (Spain), where he recieved a MSc in Chemical Engineering by the University of Oviedo in 2018. During this period, he spent 6 months in the University of Strathclyde as an Erasmus student and one year in the Max Planck Institute für Kohlenforschung (Mülheim a.d. Ruhr) as a MSc student in the department lead by Prof. Ferdi Schüth under the supervision of Dr. Gonzalo Prieto. Afterwards, he moved to ITQ (Valencia), where he worked as a PhD student in the Prieto group, focusing on the selective chain propagation of C2 into C3 compounds via Ethylene to Propylene and gas-phase hydroformylation routes. His research interests integrate multidisciplinary concepts such as induction heating processes, tandem catalysis, single atom catalysts (SACs), in situ/operando spectroscopy or Computer Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Marcos initially joined the Román lab as a visiting student in the summer of 2023. He returned in the fall of 2024 as a postdoctoral associate, supported by a Ramón Areces fellowship, to focus on the designing catalytic processes for the valorization of plastics and biomass into high-added value chemicals and fuels.
Faisal Al-Shafei
Postdoc

Office: 66-008
Phone: 617-253-0848
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Faisal received his B.S. degree (magna cum laude) in Chemical Engineering with an emphasis in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2015, where he worked with Prof. Tsotsis on membrane-type reactors for methanol synthesis. He then gained R&D experience on olefins metathesis and refining projects before completing an M.S. in Chemical Engineering at UCLA under Prof. Simonetti, developing nanomaterials for reactive sorption and catalysis. In 2023, he earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Caltech with Prof. Davis, focusing on strategies to improve ethylene and propylene selectivity in the methanol-to-olefins reaction. After a decade on the West Coast, Faisal joins the Roman Group at MIT, where his research focuses on the synthesis of microporous catalysts for sustainability applications using high-throughput and machine-learning approaches.
Zachary Westman
Postdoc

zwestman@mit.edu
Office: 66-008
Phone: 617-253-0848
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Zach was born and raised in Boulder, Colorado. He received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Arizona in 2019. He went on to complete his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 2024 at the University of California, Santa Barbara, under the supervision of Profs. Phil Christopher and Mahdi Abu-Omar. His graduate school research focused on developing kinetic and mechanistic insights for the chemical recycling of polyurethane foam via decomposition with dicarboxylic acids (acidolysis). Zach joined the Román group in Fall of 2024, where he is investigating the chemical recycling of plastics and the valorization of biomass-derived materials.
Husain Adamji
​Ph.D. Student
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Office: 66-008
Phone: 617-253-7982
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Husain grew up in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Tufts University in May 2020. As an undergraduate, Husain performed research in Professor Prashant Deshlahra’s group where he studied structure-property relations in next-generation Group III-V semiconductors like GaAsBi using Density Functional Theory (DFT). Following this project, Husain also worked with Professor Deshlahra on the selective oxidative dehydrogenation of propane using nitric oxide as a homogeneous gas-phase catalyst. At MIT, Husain is a co-advised student in the Roman and Kulik groups, and is working on novel inorganic porous catalyst design inspired by biological enzymes.
Anna Brenner
​Ph.D. Student
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Office: 66-021
Phone: 617-253-7982
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Anna graduated from the University of Kansas in 2021 with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering. Her undergraduate research with Dr. Mark Shiflett focused on developing an alternative treatment for hemochromatosis using advanced materials such as zeolites, hydrotalcites, clays, tannins, and hops. During her time at KU, she was awarded the NOAA Hollings Scholarship where she interned for the NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory and studied the effect of consumer volatile chemical products on ozone pollution in New York City. At MIT, Anna is currently working on catalytic strategies for plastic waste rehabilitation.
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Karl Westendorff
​Ph.D. Student
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Office: 66-021
Phone: 617-253-7982
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Karl received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Virginia in 2021, where he conducted research under Profs. Gaurav Giri, Dean Harman, and Chris Paolucci. With Prof. Giri, Karl investigated metal organic frameworks and their ability to separate CO2/CH4 mixtures. Additionally, Karl researched methods to control MOF polymorphism. In the Harman Lab, Karl investigated Mo and W-based dearomatization complexes with applications in pharmaceutical development and used computational techniques to understand these complexes’ reactivity. Karl’s computational work with Prof. Paolucci studied Pd speciation in SSZ-13 zeolites to aid in their potential use as passive NOx adsorbers. Now co-advised between the Román and Surendranath groups, Karl investigates the electric fields present at heterogeneous interfaces and their effects on catalysis.
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Katie Groenhout
​Ph.D. Student
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Office: 66-021
Phone: 617-253-7982
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Katie graduated with a B.S. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2022. In her undergraduate research, she worked on anion exchange membrane electrolyzers under Prof. Paul Kohl. Additionally, she worked with Prof. Nian Liu on lithium-ion batteries, and she spent a summer with Prof. Jared Delcamp at the University of Mississippi researching dye-sensitized solar cells. In the Román group, Katie will work on non-faradaic promotion and plastics.
Melissa Manetsch
​Ph.D. Student
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Office: 66-021
Phone: 617-253-7982
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Melissa obtained her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2022. At UIUC she worked in the Flaherty group where she studied active site requirements for direct ester hydrogenation. She also worked with Dr. Vanda Glezakou at Pacific Northwest National lab, where she generated DFT data and built an ML model to determine the optimal amine solvent/diene pair for carbon dioxide capture. In January 2023, Melissa joined the Kulik and Román groups as a Ph.D. student in Chemical Engineering. Now, Melissa seeks to quantify the role of electric fields in heterogeneous catalysts with spectroscopy techniques and polarizable molecular models.
Xiao Wang
​Ph.D. Student
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Office: 66-021
Phone: 617-253-7982
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Xiao is originally from China. He received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from McGill University in 2022. He performed DFT studies under the guidance of Prof. Ali Seifitokaldani, where he investigated the reaction mechanisms for reactions including OER and glucose oxidation. He also worked as an undergraduate research assistant in the Sargent group at the University of Toronto, where he worked on electrocatalytic carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide reduction reactions. As a Ph.D. student in both Prof. Yuriy Roman's and Prof. Yang Shao-Horn's groups, his current research focuses on coupling thermo- and electrocatalysis for plastic upcycling and nitrogen activation. In his spare time, he enjoys listening to music and cooking. ​
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Juliana Lu-Yang
​Ph.D. Student
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Office: 66-021
Phone: 617-253-7982
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Juliana graduated with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 2023. At Stanford, Juliana studied redox-active polymers for electrochemical energy storage under Professor Zhenan Bao and liquid crystal elastomer actuators for soft robotic systems under Professor Renee Zhao. Juliana previously also worked at Tesla to design and synthesize energy dense ceramic oxides for use in commercial electric vehicle battery cathodes. In the Román group, Juliana is working on catalytic strategies for plastics deconstruction and upcycling.
Dexter Loh
​Ph.D. Student
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Office: 66-021
Phone: 617-253-7982
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Dexter graduated from Nanyang Technological University in 2024 with a B.S. in Chemistry and Biological Chemistry. As an undergraduate, he worked under Professor So Cheuk Wai, doing research on low-valent main group catalysts using silyliumylidene cations. He also worked under Professor Soo Han Sen, investigating electrochemical strategies for cellulose valorization. His research at MIT focuses on the upgrading of lignin to fuels.
Emily Wu
​Ph.D. Student
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Office: 66-021
Phone: 617-253-7982
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Emily grew up in Troy, MI and received her B.S.E. in Chemical & Biological Engineering from Princeton University. There, she worked with Prof. Rob Knowles in the Chemistry department on photochemical hydroaminations and photo-driven, crystallization-induced diastereomer transformations of chiral amines. She also investigated the crystal polymorphism of small organic molecules while at Merck. In the Román group, Emily's research involves characterizing zeolite pore environments and understanding how they affect reactivity.
Khadiza Rahman
​UROP
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Office: 66-021
Phone: 617-253-7982
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Khadiza grew up in Astoria, NYC, and is a third-year undergraduate student at MIT studying Chemical-Biological Engineering. She spent summer 2025 in Morocco with the OCP Group working on biotic and abiotic stress modeling in wheat. In the Román group, she is currently working with Katie on non-faradaic promotion. Her interests include sustainability, biotechnology, and entrepreneurship.
