Questions from students, collaborators, and press

Graduate admissions go through the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at The University of Alabama — apply to the program and name Dr. James W. Harris and the Harris Laboratory in your statement. I am a PhD candidate, so I do not admit students myself; undergraduate research places are arranged with Dr. Harris. What I can do is tell you honestly what the work involves and point you to the right person.

General and physical chemistry plus the engineering mathematics sequence is enough to start. The habits that matter most are a careful lab notebook and a willingness to look at data you did not expect. I began in chemical engineering at Cape Peninsula University of Technology in South Africa and learned the catalysis techniques on the job — most people do.

Zeolites are crystalline materials full of very small, precisely shaped pores. What happens inside those pores — how water-repellent they are, how polar, what shape they take — decides which reaction a molecule undergoes. I study how to use that to turn glycerol, a by-product of biodiesel, and ethanol, a renewable feedstock, into more useful chemicals. Earlier, in South Africa, I worked on turning mining wastewater into catalysts and winery wastewater into biogas and fertilizer.

I am open to collaboration on zeolite catalysis, green synthesis of nanomaterials, waste valorization, and techno-economic or life-cycle assessment. The cleanest path is a short email describing the question and what each side would contribute. Anything involving unpublished work is arranged together with my advisor, Dr. James W. Harris.

Reuse is governed by the journal that published the paper. For open-access articles under a Creative Commons licence you can reuse figures with proper citation of the original paper and authors; for subscription journals, request permission through the publisher’s rights service, which is usually free for academic and educational use. If you would like a higher-resolution version, email me.

If we have worked together closely — a course where I was your teaching assistant, or sustained mentoring — I am glad to. To write something specific and strong I need at least four weeks’ notice, your CV, an unofficial transcript, the programmes or positions with their deadlines, and a short note on what you would like the letter to emphasise. I will tell you honestly if I am not the right person to write the strongest letter for a given application.

Yes. I present regularly at the Southeastern Catalysis Society and at American Chemical Society Green Chemistry & Engineering meetings, and I am happy to explain green chemistry and catalysis in plain language. I can usually accommodate requests with a few weeks of lead time; for interviews I prefer email or a scheduled video call so I can give accurate, considered answers.

I do not currently host public datasets or code repositories. Data supporting a published paper is available in that paper’s supporting information, or by email. If a repository becomes available it will be linked from the publications page.