Welcome to the Snurr Research Group Site
We are researching how nanoporous materials can (help to) save the world.
We are interested in novel materials such as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), as well as
traditional materials like zeolites that are already widely used
in industry. Porous materials with well-controlled structures at
the nanoscale can be extremely useful because of their ability to
recognize and discriminate between adsorbed molecules. This leads to
applications of nanoporous materials in adsorption separations,
catalysis, membrane processes, sensing, and energy storage.
Many of the projects in our group are aimed at solving environmental problems.
Examples include reduction of automotive emissions, development of materials to
store hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles, and development of highly selective
catalysts for green chemistry processes.
To solve these problems, we are using powerful molecular modeling techniques to develop
a better understanding of surface interactions and dynamics in
nanoporous materials. Our goal is to exploit this molecular-level
information to develop new, highly-selective processes in
adsorption separations, catalysis, and energy storage. Another goal of
our
research is to develop new simulation methods that can handle an
ever-broader range of time and length scales to address important
problems that cannot be simulated with current techniques.
We perform some experiments in the group, particularly adsorption
measurements, and we collaborate very closely with experimental
research groups at Northwestern and around the world.
NEWS
- September 2009: Congratulations to Gloria Oxford on receiving an AIChE
Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division travel award!
- September 2009: Xiaoying Bao received the Department Distinguished Graduate
Researcher Award and will present his work at the Department Retreat. Gloria
Oxford was selected as one of two runners-up and will also give a talk at the
Retreat. Congratulations!
- September 2009: Randy Snurr has published a "News & Views" piece on hydrogen
storage in
Nature Chemistry.
- August 2009: Randy Snurr has been appointed to the Editorial Board of the
Journal of Molecular Catalysis A: Chemical.
- August 2009: Xiaoying Bao and Gloria Oxford have received terminal-year
fellowships from the McCormick School of Engineering.
- June 2009: Randy Snurr is named
Leibniz Professor at the University of Leipzig
for the Summer semester 2009.
- April 2009: Group's work on MOFs highlighed in
TeraGrid
news release.
- March 2009: Congratulations to Denise Ford on defending her MS!
- March 2009: Gloria Emberger has received a Kokes Travel Award to attend the North
American Catalysis Society Meeting in San Francisco in June.
- February 2009: Congratulations to Chun-Yi Sung on defending her PhD!
- December 2008: Our paper "Separation and molecular-level segregation of
complex alkane mixtures in metal-organic frameworks" (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 130,
10884 (2008)) is highlighted in
JACS Select.
- November 2008: Graduate student Xiaoying Bao has been named a Ryan Fellow.
Congratulations!
- September 2008: Graduate student Patrick Ryan has been awarded a 3M fellowship.
Congratulations!
- August 2008: Former graduate student Maria Curet-Arana
has accepted a faculty position at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez.
She is the 6th student or
post-doc from the group to take a faculty position since 2004. Others are
- Tina Duren, University of Edinburgh
- Ashlie Martini, Purdue University
- Sudeep Punnathanam, Indian Institute of Science
- Lev Sarkisov, University of Edinburgh
- Krista Walton, Georgia Institute of Technology
- July 2008: Our paper "Carborane-based metal-organic frameworks as highly
selective sorbents for CO2 over methane" (Chem. Commun. 2008)
is featured on the
Nature Chemistry website.
- April 2008: Our paper "Applicability of the BET method for determining surface
areas of microporous metal-organic frameworks" (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 129, 8552-8556 (2007))
is featured as a "Hot Paper" on the
American Chemical Society website.
- April 2008: Randy Snurr is named a Senior Editor of the
Journal of Physical Chemistry.
- Research News Archive
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