Texas Tech University
Computational Catalysis Research Lab
Principal Investigator
Joe Gauthier
Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering
Postdoctoral Scholar, U.C. Berkeley/LBNL, 2021
Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, 2020
B.S. in Chemical Engineering, The Ohio State University, 2015
Phone: 806-834-1447
Email: joe.gauthier@ttu.edu
Address: 215 Livermore Center, Lubbock, TX 79409
Graduate Students
Samuel Olusegun
Doctoral Research Assistant
B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering, Obafemi Awolowo University
Phone: 806-730-9633
Email: solusegu@ttu.edu
Address: 210 Livermore Center, Lubbock, TX 79409
Mikael Maraschin
Doctoral Research Assistant
B.Sc in Chemical Engineering, Federal University of Santa Maria - Brazil
Phone: 806-445-8530
Email: mmarasch@ttu.edu
Address: 210 Livermore Center, Lubbock, TX 79409
Mahsa Askari
Doctoral Research Assistant
B.Sc in Chemical Engineering, Hamedan University of Technology - Iran
M.Sc in Chemical Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University - Iran
Phone: 806-401-1641
Email: mahsa.askari@ttu.edu
Address: 210 Livermore Center, Lubbock, TX 79409
Undergraduate Students
Kyle Markel
Kyle works mainly on Texas Tech's High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC) concerning an electrochemical nitrate reduction reaction catalyzed by a graphene-cobalt catalyst. Using DFT, likely reaction pathways and chemical structures can be determined in order to understand how this catalyst works on the atomic level, in the interest of reducing the amount of cobalt required for this reaction.
Allen Bushman
Modeling and simulation of polyethylene catalysis upon a platinum surface, using Python’s ASE package. Primarily investigating the behaviors and energies of disassociating alkane chains of increasing length to observe a good approximation to a theoretically infinitely long polyethylene chain.
Reagan Huckabee
Reagan utilizes several Python packages to model the adiabatic quantum tunneling of protons through differently shaped energy barriers. In doing so, this allows for the development and comparison of numerical and analytical expressions for tunneling as a function of temperature. By determining when tunneling occurs and at what energy levels it is important, this phenomenon can be leveraged in the study of catalysis and surface chemistry as a whole.