Research Group Website

Educational Qualifications

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Santa Barbara (2018-2020)
Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley (2018)
B.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Oklahoma (2012)

Courses Taught

CHE 350 Chemical Engineering Materials
CHE 379 Chemistry for a Sustainable Future
CHE 391J Graduate Reaction Kinetics

Focus

Understanding the structure and properties of catalysts to enable next-generation sustainable technologies

Research

Catalysis is central to today’s society. It is the key to producing fertilizers that support nearly half of the world’s population, converting oil into gasoline that fuels our cars, and cleaning pollutants from the air we breathe. Going forward, catalysis will also certainly be critical to transitioning to a more environmentally sustainable world.
We are interested in advancing the understanding of catalysis to guide the design of new, more efficient materials. To develop this understanding, we combine principles of chemical engineering, materials science, and physical chemistry. We employ a range of experimental tools to gain insights about the catalytic materials we make and the chemistry that happens on their surfaces.

Some of the questions we think about are:

• How does catalyst structure and composition evolve during reactions, and what effect does that have on performance?
• How can we design not only a catalytic site, but the environment surrounding it, to control selectivity and activity?
• What new opportunities do electrocatalytic reactions that run on renewable electricity provide for controlling chemistry?

Awards

• American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) 35 Under 35, 2023
• Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) Young Investigator Award, 2023
• ACS PRF Doctoral New Investigator Award, 2021
• Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science, 2020
• UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Fellow, 2012
• NSF Graduate Research Fellow, 2012

Selected Publications

• S. Da Cunha, J. Resasco*, Maximizing single-pass conversion does not result in practical readiness for CO2 reduction electrolyzers, Nat. Commun. (2023) 14, 5513. 
• J. Bender; A. S. Petersen; F. C. Østergaard; M. A. Wood; S. M. J. Heffernan; D. J. Milliron; J. Rossmeisl; J. Resasco*, “Understanding Cation Effects on the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction” ACS Energy Lett. (2023) 8, 657-665.
• J. Resasco*, F. Abild-Pedersen, C. J. Hahn, Z. Bao, M. T. M. Koper, T. F. Jaramillo, Enhancing the connection between computational methods and experiments in electrocatalysis, Nat. Catal. (2022) 5, 374-381.
• J. Resasco, A.T. Bell, Electrocatalytic CO₂ Reduction to Fuels ‒ Progress and Opportunities, Trends Chem., 2, 825-836, 2020.
• J. Resasco, P. Christopher, Atomically Dispersed Pt-group Catalysts: Reactivity, Uniformity, Structural Evolution, and Paths to Increased Functionality, J. Phys. Chem. Lett., 11, 10114-10123, 2020.
• J. Resasco*, F. Yang*, T. Mou, B. Wang, P. Christopher, D. Resasco, Reactivity as a probe of atomic scale structure of Pt catalysts: Hydrodeoxygenation of m-cresol over Pt cations and clusters, ACS Catal. 10, 595-603, 2020. *Denotes equal contribution.
• J. Resasco, L. DeRita, S. Dai, M. Xu, X. Yan, J. Finzel, S. Hanukovich, J. Chada, A. S. Hoffman, G. W. Graham, S. R. Bare, X. Pan, P. Christopher, Uniformity is key in defining structure-function relationships for atomically dispersed catalysts: the case of Pt/CeO₂, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 142, 169-184, 2020.
• L. DeRita*, J. Resasco*, S. Dai*, A. Boubnov, H. V. Thang, A. S. Hoffman, I. Ro, G. W. Graham, S. R. Bare, G. Pacchioni, X. Pan, P. Christopher, Structural evolution of atomically dispersed Pt catalysts dictates reactivity, Nat. Mater. 18, 746-751, 2019. *Denotes equal contribution.
• J. Resasco, L. Chan, E. Clark, C. Tsai, C. J. Hahn, K. Chan, T. F. Jaramillo, A. T. Bell, “Promoter Effects of Alkali Metal Cations on the Electrocatalytic Reduction of Carbon Dioxide”, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 32, 11277–11287, 2017.
• J. Resasco, H. Zhang, N. Kornienko, N. Becknell, H. Lee, J. Guo, A. L. Briseno, P. Yang, TiO₂/BiVO₄ Nanowire Heterostructure Photoanodes based on Type II Band Alignment, ACS Cent. Sci. 2, 80-88, 2016.
• J. Resasco, N.P. Dasgupta, J.R. Rosell, J. Guo, P. Yang, Uniform Doping in Metal Oxide Nanowires by Solid State Diffusion, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 136, 10521-10526, 2014.