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

• AIChE CRE Division Pioneers of Catalysis & Reaction Engineering 2025
• NSF CAREER Award 2024
• Selected as ACS Materials Au Rising Star in Materials Science 2024
• Selected for Catalysis Science & Technology Emerging Investigator Series 2024
• 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

• J. McGregor; J. Bender; A. Petersen; L. Canada; J. Rossmeisl; J. Brennecke; J. Resasco “Organic electrolyte cations promote non-aqueous CO2 reduction by mediating interfacial electric fields” Nature Catalysis (2024) doi: 10.1038/s41929-024-01278-2.
• S. Da Cunha; J. Resasco* “Insights from techno-economic analysis can guide the design of low-temperature CO2 electrolyzers towards industrial scaleup” ACS Energy Letters (2024), 9, 5550-5561.
• J. Bender; R. Sanspeur; A. Valles; A. Uvodich; D. Milliron; J. Kitchin;  J. Resasco* “The potential of zero total charge predicts cation effects for the oxygen reduction reaction” ACS Energy Letters (2024), 9, 4724-4733.
• Z. Levell; J. Le; S. Yu; R. Wang; S. Ethirajan; R. Rana; A. Kulkarni*; J. Resasco*; D. Lu*; J. Cheng*; Y. Liu* “Emerging Atomistic Models for Heterogeneous Electrocatalysis” Chemical Reviews(2024) 124,8620-8656.
• R. Marquez; E. Kalokowski; M. Espinosa; J. Bender✢; Y. Son; K. Kawashima, C. Chukwuneke; L. Smith; H. Celio; A. Dolocan; X. Zhan; N. Miller; D. Milliron; J. Resasco; C. Mullins “Transition metal incorporation: electrochemical, structure, and chemical composition effects on nickel oxyhydroxide oxygen-evolution electrocatalysts” Energy & Environmental Science (2024) 17,2028-2045.
• S. da Cunha; J. Resasco* “Maximizing single-pass conversion does not result in practical readiness for CO2 reduction electrolyzers” Nature Communications (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 Letters (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” Nature Catalysis (2022) 5,374-381.