Sustainability Series with Wendy Queen

• 12:00 – Doors open
• 12:15 – Welcome words by Prof. Andreas Mortensen, Associate Vice President for Research
• 12:20 – Talk by Prof. Wendy Queen, Laboratory of Functional Inorganic Materials
• 13:10 – Q&A moderated by Dr Yasmine Calisesi, Executive Director of the EPFL Energy Center
• 13:30 – End & lunch bags distribution

Prof. Wendy L. Queen obtained her PhD in chemistry from Clemson University in August of 2009. In 2012, she was appointed a project scientist position at the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley California where she helped launch a new user program focused on the synthesis and characterization of porous adsorbents. In 2015, she was appointed Assistant Professor in the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering at EPFL, and in 2022 she was promoted to Associate Professor. Her research is focused on the synthesis and characterization of novel porous adsorbents, such as metal-organic frameworks, that are of interest in a number of applications such as gas and liquid separations. In 2018, she won Merck’s 350 Innovation Challenge, in 2020, she was named one of C&E News“Talented 12”, an award which highlights “a dozen young rising stars who are using chemical know-how to change the world”, and in 2022 she won the Agora Optimus Prize from the Swiss National Science Foundation. She is also the president of the EPFL-Valais Campus Committee and the academic chair of the EPFL Energy Center.

In this presentation, you will first be introduced to the world’s most porous materials and then learn about their important applications in gas and liquid separations, such as carbon dioxide capture, water purification, and the retrieval of valuable metals, like gold, from waste.