News

Presenting our newest PhD graduate: Dr. Makenna Pennel

The Cargnello group is beyond thrilled and proud to present our newest PhD graduate: Dr. Makenna Pennel! Makenna, a Stanford Chemistry PhD graduate, worked on plastics upcycling and recycling, an emerging yet (extremely) challenging research field. In her dissertation, she developed well-defined colloidal catalysts to probe fundamental plastics degradation processes while discovering new processes to… Read more Presenting our newest PhD graduate: Dr. Makenna Pennel

Jinwon & Pin-Hung win joint-1st place presentation prize @ CARA meeting

At the California research alliance (CARA, by BASF) meeting, Jinwon and Pin-Hung were named joint 1st place winners for best presentation. From co-authors to now co-winners!

Group potluck

We’re kicking off the new academic year with a group potluck party! We cook good science and good food!

Two new PhD candidates from our group

We are so incredibly proud of Daniel (left) and Juan (right), who have both passed their ChemE PhD qualifying exams and advanced to candidacy!

Cargnello group @ AiChE 2025, with two CRE travel award winners!

The Cargnello group will be attending and presenting at the 2025 AiChE Annual Meeting in Boston!  Jake Heinlein (postdoc): 459f Investigation into the Structural Sensitivity of the Deactivation Mechanism for Rhodium Nanoparticles on TiO2 for the Reverse Water-Gas Shift Reaction Kang Rui Garrick Lim (new postdoc, presenting his PhD work): 252e – Raspberry-Colloid-Templating As a Model Thermocatalytic Platform… Read more Cargnello group @ AiChE 2025, with two CRE travel award winners!

Presenting our newest PhD graduate: Dr. Jinwon Oh

The Cargnello group is extremely proud to present our newest PhD graduate: Dr. Jinwon Oh! Jinwon, a Stanford Materials Science & Engineering PhD graduate, worked on developing active and stable catalysts for a range of industrially relevant catalytic reactions, such as for automobile emissions control. In his dissertation,  Jinwon presents his mastery of colloidal nanocrystal… Read more Presenting our newest PhD graduate: Dr. Jinwon Oh

Eric unveils the details of SEI layers that are relevant for ammonia e-synthesis

Eric led a collaboration that investigated the Solid-Electrolyte Interphase in Ammonia Electrosynthesis and revealed its importance to produce ammonia from nitrogen reduction using electrons and was published in ACS Energy Letters! Read the work here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsenergylett.3c01534  

Steven is a JEDI champion!

Steven is awarded the Postdoc JEDI Award from Stanford! This Award is a recognition of current Stanford University postdoctoral scholars who have championed initiatives, activities, or efforts that advance justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion at Stanford and beyond. We are so proud of him! Read more at https://postdocs.stanford.edu/current-postdocs/jedi-champion-awards/2023

New publication from the group on plastics upcycling!

Makenna’s hard work in converting plastics into alkylaromatics that can be used as sustainable lubricants has just been accepted for publication in ACS Sustain. Chem. Eng. journal! She worked hard to show that silica-alumina can be used rather than Pt to upcycle plastics. Great collaboration with colleagues at SLAC!

Welcome Henry, Alex, Sydney!

The group welcomes three new members: PhD students Henry and Alex (Chemical Engineering) and Sydney (Mechanical Engineering).