Alina Stavroula Kampouri, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Rice, has received a $110,000 Petroleum Research Fund grant from the American Chemical Society.
Her proposal was titled “Unravelling Structure-Property Relationships in MOF Photoelectrocatalysts: Insights into CO2 Reduction to Multicarbon Products.”
MOFs are metal-organic frameworks. They possess such qualities as high porosity, tunability and strong light absorption, which makes them promising candidates for semiconductor technologies, including photocatalysis and photoelectrochemical cells.
Kampouri earned her Ph.D. in chemistry and chemical engineering in 2020 from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, and then worked as a postdoctoral researcher in chemistry at MIT. She joined the Rice faculty last January.
Kampouri’s research interests include the design of porous, functional materials (e.g., metal-organic frameworks), exploring their structure-property relationship and applications in semiconductor technologies for environmental problems. Applications include light-driven catalysis for fuel synthesis, valorization of waste and remediation of water.