Research Interests

• Industrial decarbonization
• Community-based and/or distributed infrastructure
• Chemical and material manufacturing processes

Alex’s research group, the Laboratory of Future Industry (LoFI), studies low-impact chemical and materials manufacturing systems that integrate sustainably into the earth’s natural ecology and our human social environment. LoFI’s research aims to: (1) identify the resource needs of the future low-carbon world; (2) understand the complex industrial ecosystems that enable the transformation of raw materials into economic and social value; (3) design and build innovative chemical and materials manufacturing processes to meet these needs; and (4) elucidate implementation strategies that lower the barriers facing the widespread adoption of these new industrial systems.

Current Projects

• Chemical and materials manufacturing process design: Passive, modular, and distributed processes that enable the circular or low-carbon economy.
• Solar-driven chemical manufacturing: Photocatalytic and photoelectrochemical capture and conversion of greenhouse gases into commodity chemicals.
• Implementation strategies for low-carbon industrial processes: Techno-economic, life cycle, and social impact analyses that assess the value of different implementation scenarios for novel manufacturing processes.