The Prakash group
Professor G. K. Surya Prakash, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and Materials Science • George A. and Judith A. Olah Nobel Laureate Chair in Hydrocarbon Chemistry • Director, Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute
Ph.D., University of Southern California, USA, 1978
MS Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India, 1974
B.S., Bangalore University, India, 1972
Office: LHI 202
Awards and recognitions
•Research Excellence Award by the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, University of Southern California, 1984.
•Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award for Research and Scholarship, University of Southern California, 1986.
•JPL/TAP Group Achievement Award for Direct Oxidation Methanol Fuel Cells, 1994.
•Visiting Researcher, National Institute for Resources and Environment (MITI), Japan, 1996.
•First Holder of the George A. & Judith A. Olah Nobel Laureate Chair in Hydrocarbon Chemistry, 1997- present.
•Visiting Professor, University of Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris 6, France, April -May 1998.
•JPL/TAP Group Achievement Award for Low Crossover Membranes for Methanol Fuel Cells, December 1998.
•USC Associates Award for Creativity in Research and Scholarship, University of Southern California, 2000.
•Corresponding Member, European Academy of Arts, Sciences and Humanities, 2004.
•ACS National Award for Creative Work in Fluorine Chemistry, 2004.
•Elected Member, Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, 2004.
•NASA Space Act Board Award, New Fuels for Direct Oxidation Fuel Cells, 2004.
•Elected Fellow of the American Association of Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2005.
•ACS George A. Olah National Award in Hydrocarbon or Petroleum Chemistry, 2006.
•Richard C. Tolman Award, Southern California Section of the American Chemical Society, 2006.
•Distinguished Alumnus Award, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India, 2007.
•CRSI Medal, Chemical Research Society of India, 2010.
•Bürgestock Lecturer, 2010.
•Albert S. Raubenheimer Senior Faculty Award, Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, University of Southern California, 2011.
•Mellon Mentoring Award (Post Doctoral), University of Southern California, 2012.
•Elected Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences (EURASC), 2012.
•Cited in Marquis Who’s Who in America.
•Elected Foreign Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India, 2013.
•Inaugural $1M Eric and Sheila Samson Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation in Alternative Fuels for Transportation, Israel (shared with G. A. Olah), 2013.
•Elected Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS Fellow), 2014.
•ASEI Scientist of the Year, Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, American Association of Engineers of Indian Origin, 2014.
•Prix Henri Moissan Prize for Excellence in Fluorine Chemistry, 2015.
•19th Charles Reed Endowed Lecturer, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 2016.
•ACS National Arthur C. Cope Late Career Scholar Award, 2018.
•Daneshy International Award for Best Invention on Energy Transition, E-CET, Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, 2023.
Staff
Robert Aniszfeld
Managing Director, Business and Administration
Jessie May
Administrative Assistant II
Patrice Batamack
Senior Research Scientist
Alain Goeppert
Senior Research Scientist
Thomas Mathew
Senior Research Scientist
Bo Yang
Research Associate
Prof. Soon Hyeok Hong
Current members
Ziyue Zhu
5th-year PhD Student
B.S., Pennsylvania State University, USA, 2017
Research Interest: Organic Synthesis and Organofluorine Chemistry. Difluorocarbene Chemistry.
Office: LHI 206
Alexander Knieb
4th-year PhD Student
B.S., Westfälische Wilhelms Universität Münster, Germany, 2018
Research Interests: Organofluorine and synthetic organic chemistry. Development of new methods and reagents for selective difluoromethyl thiocyanation and difluoromethylenation of organic molecules
Office: LHI 206
Daniel Lin
4th-year PhD Student
B.S., University of California, Los Angeles, USA, 2020
Research Interests: Photochemical organic transformations, selective fluorofunctionalization, hypervalent iodine chemistry.
Office: LHI 206
Antonio Vasquez
4th-year PhD Student
B.S., St. Mary’s University, USA, 2020
Research Interest: Synthetic Organic Chemistry
Office: LHI 206
Jiaqi Tan
5th-year PhD Student (joint student with Prof. Chao Zhang)
B.S. in Chemistry, Xiamen University
Research interests: Small-molecule drug development and chemoproteomics
Office: TRF
Juan Pablo de los Rios
5th-year Ph.D. Student
B.S., Chemistry, University of Texas, Austin, USA, 2018
Research Interest: Polymer chemistry, electrochemistry, photoelectrocatalysis, and inorganic chemistry
Office: LHI 112
Matthew Coe
3rd-year Ph.D. Student
B.S in Chemistry in 2021 at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, PA
Research Interests: Organofluorine and synthetic organic chemistry. Metallaphotoredox catalysis and organic-based aqueous redox flow battery materials.
Office: LHI 206
Yijie Xu
3rd-year Ph.D. Student
B.S in Chemistry (Minor in mathematics) Boston College, MA
Research Interests: Organofluorine and synthetic organic chemistry.
Office: LHI 206
Anushan Alagaratnam
3rd year Ph.D student
B.S. Chemistry, St. John’s University 2021
Homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, Synthesis, CO2 capture and conversion.
Office: LHI 205
Zohaib Suhail
2nd-year Ph.D. student
Bachelor of Science, Chemistry, Education Minor, University of Santa Barbara
Research Interest: Carbon capture and conversion, heterogeneous catalysis, methanol economy, hydrogen production
Office: LHI 205
Po Ching Hsu (Eric)
2nd-year Ph.D. Student
Office: LHI 205
B.S. in Chemistry (UC Santa Cruz)
Research interests: Organic Redox-flow batteries, CO2-Reduction via electrochemical methods, Fuel Cell (methanol)
Office: LHI 112
Ryuichi Fukuda
2nd-year Ph.D. Student
B.S. in Chemistry, Computing Specialization from University of California, Los Angeles
Research interests: Electrochemistry, energy storage (battery), electrochemical catalysis (CO2 reduction, methanol fuel cell)
Office: LHI 206
Yeshvi Tomar
2nd-year Ph.D. Student
M.S., IIT-Bombay
B.S. in Chemistry, University of Delhi
Research interests: Rechargeable battery, methanol fuel cell, CO2 reduction
Office: LHI 112
REU students
Fanni Bede
Visiting Student, University of Pécs
Jeffrey Vickerman
Jake Brown
Jazmin
Maiko Lunn
Deesha Pathak
Tasnia Rasul
Vanessa Carpio
Past Graduate Students, Post-doctorals and Visiting Scholars
Adamson, Douglas; Adler, George; Ahlberg, Per; Akhrem Irena; Alemayehu, Mesfin; Aloia, Alexandra; Archut, Andreas; Arvanaghi, Massoud; Asensio, Gregorio; Atti, Anthony; Bach, Thorsten; Bae, Chulsung; Bagno, Alessandro; Barrett, Colby; Barzaghi, Mario; Bausch, Joseph W.; Baxter, Amanda; Beal, David; Beier, Peter; Bellew, Donald; Belligund, Kavita; Berrier, Arthur; Blasco, Jorge; Bodis, Jeno; Bollinger, J. Martin; Bradley, Michael; Brinich, Jean; Bruce, Mark R.; Brunck, Jörg-Stephan; Brydon, Donald L.; Buchholz, Herwig; Bucsi, Imre; Bukala, Jozef; Burrichter, Arwed; Butala, Steven; Bychinskaya, Inessa; Calin, Mihai; Chambers, Richard; Chao, Jiangping; Chun, Young-Gab; Clay, Tim; Clifford, Paul; Clouet, Francoise; Clouet, Gilbert; Colmenares, Juan Carlos; Comisarow, Melvin B.; Commeyras, Auguste; Czaun, Miklos; Dang, Hong; Deffieux, Denis; Denis, Jean Marc; DeMember, John; Do, Clement; Doggweiler, Hans; Donovan, Daniel J.; Dunne, Kenneth; Edelson, Ed; Edler, Ronald; Ellis, Robert; Entesari, Nazanin; Ernst, Thomas; Etzkorn, Markus; Esteves, Pierre Mothe; Farnia, Morteza; Farooq, Omar; Farzaneh, Paknia; Felberg, Jeff; Fessner, Wolf-Dieter; Field, Les D.; Fogassy, Gabriella; Fortsmeyer, Dietmar; Foster,Louise Riemenschneider; Forsyth, David A.; Frohlich, Stephan; Fu, Fang; Fung, Alexander P.; Fu, Xiangkai; Galvan, Vicente; Garcia-Luna, Armando; Ganesh, Somesh; George, Helmu; Germain, Alain; Glass, Dean; Glinton, Kevin; Gnann, Robert; Goelitz, Peter; Grant, James L.; Gardina, Mary Jo; Greci, Marcia; Gupta, B.G. Balaram; Gurung, Laxman; Ha, Dang Soo; Hachoumy, Mohammed; Halpern, Yuval; Hamanaka, Sawako; Hansen, Paul Erik; Handley, Judith; Hartz, Nickolai; Hashimoto, Iwao; Hashimoto, Tashiro; Head, Nicholas; Heagy, Mike; Hehemann, David G.; Heiliger, Ludger; Heiler, Ludger; Heiner, Thomas; Herges, Rainer; Ho, Tse-Lok; Hockswender Jr., Thomas; Hoole, Dushanthy; Horimoto, Hideaki; Howard, Arthur; Hu, Jinbo; Huba, Francis; Huisgen, Rolf; Humadi, Ron; Husain, Altaf; Hwang, JePil; Inaba, Shin-ichi; Ip, W.P.; Ismail, Rehana; Ispizua Rodriguez, Xanath; Iuliucci, Marc; Iyer, Pradeep; Iza, Alfonso; Jeuell, Charles L.; Jindall, Satya P.; Jog, Parag; Johanson, Robert; Jones, John-Paul; Joschek, Jens; Kantamneni, Shobha; Kar, Sayan; Karpeles,Rick; Kasha, Walter; Kashimura, Shigenori; Kaspi, Joseph; Kelly, David P.; Kerekes, Istvan; Kiovsky, Thomas; Keumi, Takashi; Keyaniyan, Schahad; Kirchmeyer, Stephan; Klumpp, Douglas; Knieler, Roland; Kobayashi, Shiro; Koch, Christopher J.; Koltunov, Konstantin; Kong, Eugene; Kothandaraman, Jotheeswari; Kotian, Kitu; Krass, Norbert; Krause, Frederick; Kreienbuhl, Paul; Krishnamoorty, Sankarganesh; Krishnamurti, Ramesh; Krishnamurti, Vinayak; Krishnaraj, Suchitra; Krishnan, Hema; Krishnamurthy, V.V.; Kroll, Manfred; Ku, Alice; Kumagai, Hitoshi; Kumar, Anjali; Laali, Khosrow; Lambert, Christian; Lammertsma, Koop; Laube, Thomas; Lecoq, Jean-Claude; Ledneczki, Istvan; Lee, Chang Soo; Lehnhoff, Stefan; Li, Xing-ya; Liang, Gao; Liao, Qimu; Lin, Henry C.; Lin, Johnny C.H; Liu, Xu; Lukas, Joachim; McFarland, Charles, W.; Malhotra, Ripudaman; Mandal, Mihirbaran; Marcelli, Mike; Marinez, Eric; Masuda, Shinji; Mateescu, Gheorghe; Mathew, Thomas; Mayr, Herbert; Mehotra, Ashok K.; Meidar, David; Melby, Earl, G.; Merten, Alfred; Messina, Guiseppe; Meth, Sergio; Mitra, Anjana; Mloston, Gregory; Mo, Yoke Kong; Molnar, Arpad; Moran, Matthew; Morton, Peter; Munoz, Socrates; Mwashimba, Paul; Nakajima, Tadashi; Nakayama, Koji; Nan, Shao; Narang, Subhash C.; Narayanan, Arjun; Namanworth, Eli; Neyer, Gebhard; Ni, Chuanfa; Nirmalchandar, Archith; Nishimura, Jun; Nojima, Masatomo; O’Brien, Daniel H.; Ohannesian, Lena; Ohyama, Toshiyuki; Ohnishi, Ryuichiro; Orlinkov, Alex; Oxyzoglou, Alex; Padmas, D.K.; Palinko, Istvan; Palomino, Pablo Linares; Papp, Attila; Paquette, Dawn; Paquin, Don; Parker, Don; Pathak, Srikant; Pelizza, Franco; Pertusati, Fabrizio; Phthak, Srikant; Pichika, Ramaiah; Pinion, Jack; Piteau, Marc; Pittman, Charles U.; Pitsch, Wolfgang; Pleynet, Virginie; Porter, Richard D.; Prinzbach, Horst; Quaiser, Stephan; Ramos, Maria Theresa; Rao, Bhushan Chandra; Rasul, Golam; Rawdah, Tarik; Reddy, V. Prakash; Renner, Rudi; Rochin, Christophe; Roshandel, Sahar; Roussel, Roger; Rupp, Rolf; Saitoh, Akihisa; Sakakibara, Toru; Salem, George; Salzburn, Stefan; Sandford, Graham; Sassaman, Mark B.; Schilling, Peter; Schlosberg, Richard H.; Sen, Raktim; Serianz, Art; Schwaiger, Sabine; Schweizer, Stefan; Serion Jr. Anthony; Shakhmin, Anton; Shamma, Tatyana; Shen, Jacob; Siehl, Hans-Ulrich; Simon, Jurgen; Singh, Brij P.; Shih, Joseph G.; Smart, Marshall; Sommer, Jean; Spear, Robert; Staral, John; Stephenson, Maurice; Stolp, Gunther; Struckhoff, Jay; Suemmermann, Klaus; Supuribekov, Murat; Suzuki, Hiroshi; Svoboda, James J.; Szilagyi, Paul; Tabor, Derrick; Tai, Christine Lui; Takehiko, Yamato; Takeshita, Michinori; Tanaka, Mutsuo; Tashiro, Masashi; Thiebes, Christoph; Tongco, Emily; Török, Bela; Tressaud, Alain; Trivedi, Nirupam; Tsuge, Akihiko; Ung, Adam B.; Vaghoo, Habiba; Vankar, Yaswant; Vaughan, Julian; VanVliet, David; Wada, Yasuhiko; Walspurger, Stephane; Yudin, Andrei K.; Wang, Fang; Wang, Qi; Wang, Qunjie; Wang, Rui; Watkins, Mike; Weber, Klaus; Weber, Thomas; Welch, John; Welz-Biermann, Urz; Westermann, Philip; White, Anthony M.; Wiedemann, Jurgen; Wilkinson, John; Wu, An-hsiang; Yamada, Yorinobu; Yan, Ping; Yang, Bo; Yoneda, Norihiko; York Yu, Chentao; Yu, Simon; Yudin, Andrei; Zadoc, Elazar; Zhang, Hang; Zhang,Zhe; Zibinsky, Mikhail; Zuanic Miljenko