Matteo Pasquali is the A. J. Hartsook Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Chemistry, and Materials Science & NanoEngineering. Prof. Pasquali is also the founding Director of the Carbon Hub, a partnership between academia, industry and federal labs encompassing over 20 organizations across four continents. The Carbon Hub develops and deploys pathways for simultaneously harvesting zero-emission hydrogen and carbon materials that can slash emissions from industry and transportation. Prof. Pasquali leads an academic team that received the first Kavli Foundation Exploration Award in Nanoscience for Sustainability. Prof. Pasquali joined Rice University in 2000 and has served as Chair of the Chemistry Department, Magister of Lovett College, Co-Director of the Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory, and Chief Scientific Advisor for Nanotechnology at Shell (sabbatical). His research lab is credited with laying the scientific foundations for the structure-property relationships and the industrial production of carbon nanotube (CNT) fibers, for the demonstration of their high performance, and for the development of scalable pathways for their manufacturing. His laboratory studies the interplay of energy, materials, and carbon, and is pioneering system-level pathways to decarbonize the industrial sector by using carbon materials while co-producing clean hydrogen. Prof. Pasquali is an elected Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has won numerous awards including the NSF CAREER, Goradia Innovation Grand Prize, Herschel Rich Invention Award, Schlack Prize for Man-Made fibers, and the Rice Presidential Mentoring Award. Prof. Pasquali has advised over 100 graduate students and postdocs, who are now in key positions in leading universities, industry, national laboratories, startups, and finance. Prof. Pasquali and his students have co-authored over 230 scientific articles and over 30 patents and patent applications, which have been cited over 20,000 times. Prof. Pasquali and his students have started companies focused on medical applications of CNT fibers and sustainable CNT materials.
WEBSITE(S)| Pasquali Research Group | Publications | Google Scholar
Research Areas
Sustainable Carbon Materials; Industrial Decarbonization; Interrelationships between energy use, hydrocarbon use, materials production, and climate change; CO2-free conversion of natural gas and hydrocarbons to materials with positive clean hydrogen production; theoretical, computational, experimental, technoeconomic, and life-cycle analysis of: scalable liquid-phase processing of carbon nanotubes (CNTs); material recycling; behavior of individual CNTs in water and other liquids; rheology and phase behavior of concentrated liquid phases of CNTs (networks; lyotropic liquid crystals); rheology and phase behavior of functionalized CNTs in liquids; scalable synthesis of CNTs; scalable separation of metallic vs. semiconductor CNTs; fiber spinning CNTs from solutions; fabrication of transparent, conductive films of CNTs; applications of CNTs as fuel cell electrodes; applications of CNTs in biological systems; new materials with high electrical and thermal conductivity; purification, solution phase behavior, and material processing of boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs), graphene, and hexagonal boron nitride; rheology and phase behavior of oilfield fluids; fluid mechanics and rheology of polymer solutions; visualization of flowing DNA molecules; free-surface and interfacial flows; flow, blood rheology, hemolysis, and thrombosis in blood pumps; response of white and red blood cells to strain and stress; stabilized Galerkin/finite element methods for viscoelastic flow; rheology of semi-flexible polymer molecules; DNA condensation; emulsion rheology.
Education
1999, Postdoc, Chemical Engineering (Polymer Physics), University of Minnesota
1999 Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, University of Minnesota
1992 M.Sci., Chemical Engineering, summa cum laude, University of Bologna, Italy