2024, May 24
#NUgoesGLOBAL
NU graduate becomes assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University
2024, May 24
Share this articleAisulu Aitbekova will join the Department of Chemical Engineering starting in August 2025
Aisulu is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience at the California Institute of Technology. She received a BS in chemical engineering from NU in 2015, an MS in chemical engineering from MIT in 2016, and a PhD in chemical engineering from Stanford University in 2021.
Aitbekova develops processes using solar energy to produce clean fuels and chemicals. “Sunlight is abundant and free. It opens up pathways that traditional approaches cannot,” she says.
The current chemical industry is built on the use of fossil fuels as raw materials. Aitbekova's research will help the industry switch to sustainable raw materials such as recycled plastics, carbon dioxide, which can be obtained from air or ocean water, and biomass. She develops sustainable processes that use sunlight to cause chemical transformations.
There are many ways to use sunlight. For example, at the macro level, a solar-powered reactor can use sunlight to generate heat or electricity. Inside the reactor, new catalytic materials could facilitate solar-driven chemical conversion processes at the micro- and nanoscale.
“If we want to develop a new process that is very different from what we have now, we need innovation at very different scales,” says Aitbekova. Her experience ranges from developing materials at the nanoscale to controlling the environment around those materials at the microscale and developing processes at the macroscale.
Aitbekova's path to this research began when she came from Kazakhstan to the United States for a summer research internship. Her mentor introduced her to the idea of graduate school. To justify the recommendations she received, Aitbekova strives to become a bridge to graduate school for students from different backgrounds. As a research fellow, she played a key role in creating the Caltech Accountability Partners program, which helps undergraduate students apply to graduate school, and she hopes to continue her work at Carnegie Mellon.
