The philosophy of our research approach is summarized by James Clerk Maxwell^1.:

" I have no reason to believe that the human intellect is able to weave a system of physics out of its own resources without experimental labour."

"...The dimmed outlines of phenomenal things all merge into one another unless we put on the focusing glass of theory, and screw it up sometimes to one pitch of definition and sometimes to another, so as to see down into different depths through the great millstone of the world."

Maxwell frequently employed combinations of experimental and theoretical approaches to solving problems, and clearly understood the need for multiscale modeling of real systems.

Our research group utilizes principles of catalysis to address energy and environmental problems.  Our two major focus areas are CO2 capture and the catalysis of energy relevant reactions such as water gas shift and methanol synthesis. We are currently developing new CO2 sorbents, electrochemical gas separation technology, new concepts in facilitating the reduction of CO2 and new concepts in the reactivity of catalyst surfaces under reaction conditions. We use combinations of fundamental and applied experimental methods as well as computational methods to understand trends in reactivity.

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