Group Members

Principal Investigator

Professor Xiao Su

Office Number: RAL-105 // E-mail: x2su@illinois.edu

Xiao Su is an Assistant Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He obtained his Bachelor in Applied Sciences in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo in 2011. He completed his PhD in Chemical Engineering from MIT in 2016, working under the supervision of Professor T. Alan Hatton from Chemical Engineering and Professor Timothy F. Jamison from Chemistry. During his doctoral studies, Xiao received the MIT Water Innovation Prize and the MassCEC Catalyst Award for his work on electrochemically-mediated water purification. His research program pursues the molecular engineering of functional materials for advanced separations and process intensification.

Graduate Students

Raylin Chen

Office Number: RAL-7 // E-mail: raylinc2@illinois.edu

Raylin graduated from the University of California Berkeley, in 2017, receiving a dual B.S. in Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering. He has performed undergraduate research at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on catalyst synthesis and characterization. His current research interests at UIUC lie in the fundamental investigation of materials synthesis and processing through electrochemical control.

Stephen Cotty

Office Number: RAL-7 // E-mail: cotty2@illinois.edu

Stephen graduated from Clemson University in 2017 in Chemical Engineering. During undergraduate at Clemson, he worked with Prof. Mark Roberts on redox-flow battery research, and also full-time at the Argonne National Laboratory on the design of a pilot-scale Flame Pyrolysis Plant. His focus at UIUC is on leveraging redox electrochemistry for process intensification in chemical and environmental applications.

Haley Vapnik

Office Number: RAL-7 // E-mail: hvapnik2@illinois.edu

Haley received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University, in 2018. Her undergraduate research at Purdue involved the study of functional polymers for projects in sensing and enhanced oil recovery, and internships at Logan Aluminum, Kraft Heinz Company, Walt Disney Imageneering and King Nutronics Corporation. Haley’s interests at UIUC focus on functional materials discovery and synthesis for selective electrochemical separations.