Research Philosophy
Prof. Suljo Linic
Curriculum Vitae
The objective of our work is to develop predictive theories of surface chemistry related to heterogeneous catalysis, electro—catalysis and photo—catalysis. We are currently working on a number of projects in the fields of sustainable energy generation and conversion, functional nanomaterials, fundamental and applied heterogeneous catalysis, electro-catalysis, and photo-catalysis. We are focused on materials synthesis, characterization and testing. We use a range of experimental techniques including those aimed at performance assessment, kinetic analysis of chemical transformations, in operando spectroscopy, and electron microscopy. These experimental techniques are combined with first principles theoretical tools such as electronic structure calculations (DFT), ab initio kinetics and thermodynamics, and optical simulations.
May 15, 2013
Congratulations to Calvin Boerigter and Robert Campana on passing the Doctoral Candidacy Exam.May 7, 2013
Congratulations to Adam Holewinski and Tim Van Cleve, who were awarded the Outstanding Student Presentation and the Outstanding Student Poster awards at this year's Michigan Catalysis Society Symposium.May 7, 2013
Michigan Catalysis Society Annual Symposium, Dearborn, Michigan
Congratulations to Adam Holewinski and Tim Van Cleve, who were awarded the Outstanding Student Presentation and the Outstanding Student Poster awards at this year's Michigan Catalysis Society (MCS) meeting.April 22, 2013
Congratulations to Marimuthu Andiappan, who successfully defended his thesis today. Mari has accepted a research position at Eli Lilly.April 17, 2013
Congratulations to Anh Ta, who passed her preliminary examination and advanced to candidacy.March 15, 2013
Hongliang Xin has accepted a postdoctoral research position with Prof. Jens Norskov at Stanford University.January 15, 2013
Marimuthu Andiappan has accepted a position with Eli Lilly and Company R&D, starting this fall. Mari will defend his thesis this spring.January 7, 2013
Welcome to Calvin Boerigter who has joined the Linic Group this spring.November 1, 2012
Welcome to first year Ph.D. student Robert Campana who has joined the Linic Group this fall.-
May 16, 2012
Congratulations to Thomas Noel and Anh Ta on passing the Doctoral Qualifying Exam. -
March 1, 2012
Congratulations to Siris Laursen, who has recently accepted a faculty position and will join the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville this August. January 20, 2012
Prof. Suljo Linic has received the Monroe-Brown Foundation Research Excellence Award from the University of Michigan College of Engineering. This award is presented to a faculty member who demonstrates sustained excellence in research and related scholarly activities.November 3, 2011
Michelle Przybylek won the annual Blue-Green Seminar student poster session. Michelle's poster was titled "Solar Hydrogen Production: Using Plasmonic Nanoparticles to Increase Efficiencies"".November 1, 2011
Welcome to first year Ph.D. students Thomas Noel and Anh Ta, who have joined the Linic Group.October 10, 2011
Congratulations to Hongliang Xin, who successfully defended his thesis. Hongliang will temporarily stay on as a postdoc working in our group.September 6, 2011
Prof. Suljo Linic has been awarded the NSEF (Nano Science and Engineering Forum) Young Investigator Award from AIChE for his contributions in energy conversion through the development of energy efficient and environmentally friendly nanomaterials for catalysis and photocatalysis. He will be recognized at this year's Annual Meeting in Minneapolis.August 17, 2011
Congratulations to Phil Christopher, who successfully defended his thesis. Phil will begin his assistant professorship at UC Riverside this fall.August 16, 2011
Congratulations to David Ingram, who successfully defended his thesis. David will begin his position at ConocoPhillips R&D in September.June 6–10, 2011
North American Catalysis Society, 22nd North American Meeting, Detroit, Michigan
Several members of the Linic group will present talks at the upcoming NACS meeting in Detroit, Michigan. The meeting is being organized and hosted by our local Michigan Catalysis Society chapter.May 11, 2011
Phil Christopher has accepted a faculty position in the Department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Riverside. Phil will start the position this fall after completing his PhD in the summer. He will also have an appointment in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at UCR.May 3, 2011
Our recent photo-catalysis work has been featured in a press release issued by the University of Michigan, and picked up by a number of online news outlets. The article specifically mentions our two recent publications in Nature Chemistry and the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Read the full press release here.May 2, 2011
David Ingram has accepted a position with ConocoPhillips R&D, starting this fall. David will defend his thesis this summer.April 5, 2011
First-year PhD student Brittany Lancaster has been awarded an NSF fellowship. Congratulations!March 12, 2011
Our recent paper in the Journal of Chemical Physics (H. Xin, S. Linic, J. Chem. Phys. 132, 221101, 2010) was selected for the 2010 Editors' Choice list, highlighting “notable JCP articles published in 2010 that present ground-breaking research”. See the whole list here.January 4, 2011
Our recent paper in ChemCatChem (P. Christopher, S. Linic, ChemCatChem 2, 78, 2010) was listed as one of the three most accessed articles from the journal's first year in print (August 2009 to July 2010). Read the press release here.January 4, 2011
Dr. Neil Schweitzer has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship position at Argonne National Lab, beginning February 2011.November 12, 2010
Phil Christopher was given the inaugural College of Engineering Outstanding Ph.D. Student Research Award. Each department in the college nominated one PhD student, and one student out of the 13 representatives was chosen to receive the first place award. The key criteria for the award selection were: Innovative research demonstrating a keen sense of creativity and inventiveness and the impact the research will have on society.November 12, 2010
Adam Holewinski was selected as one of the recipients of the Catalysis & Reaction Engineering Division poster awards at the AIChE conference in Salt Lake City. Adam's poster was titled "Experimental and Computational Studies of Oxygen Reduction on Platinum and Silver Catalysts in Acidic and Basic Media".November 7–12, 2010
American Institute of Chemical Engineers National Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah
Prof. Suljo Linic, Hongliang Xin, Phil Christopher, David Ingram and Adam Holewinski attended and gave presentations at the 2010 AIChE National Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. Adam was selected as one of the recipients of the Catalysis & Reaction Engineering Division poster awards.October 21, 2010
Welcome to the four new students who join the Linic Group this semester: master's student Jianwen Zhang and doctoral students Paul Hernley, Brittany Lancaster and Timothy Van Cleve.September 7, 2010
Congratulations to Marimuthu Andiappan, who has passed his preliminary examination and advanced to candidacy.August 30, 2010
Congratulations to Neil Schweitzer, who successfully defended his thesis today. Neil will temporarily stay on as a postdoc working with both the Linic and Thompson research groups.July 1, 2010
David Ingram and Phil Christopher each won the Outstanding Poster Presentation Award at Gordon Research Conference on Catalysis. There were 5 winning among 80 presented posters. These were presented by graduate students attending various institutions across the world. Our group has received this recognition in three consecutive meetings: 2006 (Eranda Nikolla), 2008 (Phil Christopher), and 2010 (David Ingram and Phil Christopher).June 27–July 2, 2010
Gordon Research Conference on Catalysis, New London, New Hampshire
Hongliang Xin, Phil Christopher and David Ingram presented posters. Phil and Dave both received awards for best student poster presentation. Prof. Linic also attended the conference.May 21, 2010
Prof. Linic has received tenure and been promoted to Associate Professor.May 19, 2010
Congratulations to Michelle and Thomas, who passed their first year qualifying exams.February 17, 2010
Dr. Eranda Nikolla has been selected for the ProQuest 2009 Distinguished Dissertation Award, which is given by the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School for the best PhD theses in a given year. Eranda graduated from the Linic Group in May 2009.February 9, 2010
Phil Christopher has been awarded a Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship. This prestigious fellowship is given by the University of Michigan each year to approximately 50–60 doctoral students.January 12, 2010
Prof. Suljo Linic has received the 1938E Award from the University of Michigan College of Engineering. The 1938E award, which is the highest award given by the College of Engineering to an assistant professor, is presented “in recognition of an outstanding teacher in both elementary and advanced courses, an understanding counselor of students who seek guidance in their choice of career, a contributor to the educational growth of his/her College, and a teacher whose scholarly integrity pervades his/her service to the University and the profession of Engineering”.December 12, 2009
Phil Christopher and David Ingram received the best poster award at the 2009 Walter J. Weber Distinguished Lecture Poster Session for a poster titled “Rational Design of Plasmon-Enhanced Composite Photo-Catalysts for Solar Applications”.December 1, 2009
Welcome to first year Ph.D. students Michelle Przybylek and Thomas Yeh, who have joined the Linic Group. Michelle received her B.S. from UConn in 2009 and Thomas (who will be co-advised by Prof. Phil Savage) completed his B.S. in 2009 at the Ohio State University.November 20, 2009
David Ingram has been awarded the inaugural Chemical Engineering Department Teaching Fellowship. He will assist with instructing ChE 344 Reaction Engineering & Design in the Winter 2010 term.November 9–13, 2009
American Institute of Chemical Engineers National Conference, Nashville, Tennessee
Several members of the Linic Group attended the AIChE national conference in Nashville, Tennessee. David Ingram, Neil Schweitzer, Hongliang Xin and Dr. Eranda Nikolla each gave a research presentation. Prof. Linic gave four presentations and chaired two sessions.November 9, 2009
American Vacuum Society, 56th International Symposium
Phil Christopher gave an invited presentation titled “Well-defined, Highly Uniform Metallic Nano-Structures as Selective Heterogeneous Catalysts and Platforms for Chemical Characterization”.September 3, 2009
Congratulations to Siris Laursen, who successfully defended his PhD thesis today. Siris has accepted a post-doctoral fellowship position with Prof. Avelino Corma at the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain.September 1, 2009
Eranda Nikolla has accepted a faculty position at Carnegie Mellon University after recently completing her PhD. Eranda will spend the next year working as a post-doc at CalTech with Prof. Mark Davis before moving to CMU to begin her faculty position.August 18, 2009
American Chemical Society Annual Conference, Washington, D.C.
Adam Holewinski presented a talk entitled “Degradation of the performance of SOFC electrodes under extreme environments” at the ACS Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.July 8, 2009
Congratulations to Adam Holewinski for passing his Preliminary Examination and advancing to candidacy.June 7, 2009
North American Catalysis Society, 21st North American Meeting, San Fransisco, California
Several members of the Linic group presented as the NACS national conference in San Francisco, California.May 13, 2009
Prof. Suljo Linic has been awarded the ACS Colloid and Surface Chemistry Unilever Award for 2009. The award recognizes the work of a young investigator with particular attention to “originality and creativity”.May 12, 2009
David Ingram won the best oral presentation award at the 2009 Michigan Catalysis Society Annual Symposium.May 12, 2009
Michigan Catalysis Society Annual Symposium, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Several members of the Linic Group gave talks at the 31st Michigan Catalysis Society Annual Symposium. David Ingram won the outstanding student presentation with a talk titled “Exploiting the optical properties of well-defined nano-structures for photo-catalytic applications”. Neil Schweitzer gave a talk titled “Platinum Supported on Molybdenum-Carbide for the Water-gas Shift Reaction: A Theoretical and Experimental Study”.May 6, 2009
Congratulations to Marimuthu Andiappan, Katrina Ramsdell, and Matthew Morabito for passing their Doctoral Qualifying Exams. Katrina also graduated with her M.S. degree this semester.April 28, 2009
Prof. Suljo Linic has been awarded a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. This award is based on having published an important and independent body of scholarly research along with showing a dedication to education in the chemical sciences. Only three chemical engineering faculty in the country were selected for this prestigious award.January 23, 2009
Welcome to Marimuthu Andiappan, who joins our group this winter. Mari received his M.E. degree from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 2007.December 12, 2008
Congratulations to Eranda Nikolla for successfully defending her PhD thesis. The topic of her thesis is “Combined Experimental/Theoretical Approach Toward the Development of Carbon Tolerant Electrocatalyst for Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Anodes”.November 21, 2008
American Institute of Chemical Engineers National Conference, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The Linic Group was well-represented at the 2008 AIChE National Conference in Philadelphia, PA. Prof. Suljo Linic gave two presentations and chaired several sessions. Siris Laursen, Eranda Nikolla, Neil Schweitzer, David Ingram, and Phil Christopher also gave presentations.November 7, 2008
Welcome to Matthew Morabito, who joins our group as a first-year PhD student this fall. Matt previously worked with the Linic group as an undergraduate student.September 5, 2008
Welcome to Katrina Ramsdell, who joins our group this fall. Katrina is an NSF Fellow who received her B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2007.June 27, 2008
Gordon Research Conference on Catalysis, New London, New Hampshire
Prof. Suljo Linic give a presentation entitled “Design of Heterogeneous (Electro)catalysts Guided by Molecular Insights” at the 2008 Gordon Research Conference on Catalysis on June 26, 2008. Phil Christopher presented a research poster, which was selected as a winner of the student poster competition. Siris Laursen, Eranda Nikolla, Neil Schweitzer, Hongliang Xin, and David Ingram also presented posters.May 28, 2008
Congratulations to David Ingram, who passed his Preliminary Examination today.May 16, 2008
Congratulations to Phil Christopher for passing his Preliminary Examination and advancing to candidacy.May 9, 2008
Congratulations to Adam Holewinski, who passed his Doctoral Qualifying Examination.May 8, 2008
Phil Christopher's presentation at the 2008 Michigan Catalysis Society Annual Symposium was selected to receive the award for Outstanding Student Presentation.May 8, 2008
Michigan Catalysis Society Annual Symposium
Several members of the Linic Group participated in the 2008 Michigan Catalysis Society Annual Symposium. Phil Christopher presented a talk titled “Engineering Selectivity in Heterogeneous Catalysis: The Impact of Ag Surface Structure on the Selectivity of Ethylene Epoxidation”, which was awarded the outstanding student presentation. David Ingram displayed a poster titled “Electrochemistry from First Principles: Studies of Electrochemical Transformations at Model Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) Anodes”.May 2, 2008
Prof. Suljo Linic has been awarded a DuPont Young Professor Award. This award, which provides research support for 3 years, is awarded annually to 10–15 investigators worldwide across multiple scientific disciplines.April 7, 2008
American Chemical Society Spring National Meeting
Siris Lausen, Eranda Nikolla, and Prof. Linic gave presentations at the ACS Spring 2008 national meeting in New Orleans, LA.November 19, 2007
Eranda Nikolla has been selected to recieve the 2007–2008 Walter J. Weber, Jr. Award in Environmental and Energy Sustainability.November 9, 2007
American Institute of Chemical Engineers National Conference
Professor Suljo Linic, Eranda Nikolla, and Siris Laursen gave presentations at the AIChE National Conference in Salt Lake City, UT.November 1, 2007
Welcome to Adam Holewinski, who is joining our group this fall. Adam previously worked in our group as an undergraduate student.October 10, 2007
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to surface scientist Gerhard Ertl for “his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces”.September 17, 2007
Congratulations to Neil Schweitzer and Hongliang Xin on the passing of their Preliminary Examinations.August 31, 2007
Goodbye and good luck to our Research Fellow, Joydeep Mukherjee, who is leaving our group to join Dow Chemicals in Freeport, TX.August 27, 2007
Prof. Suljo Linic has been selected to receive this year's Departmental Excellence Award for outstanding research, service, and teaching.August 10, 2007
Farewell and good luck to our Masters student, Andrew Getsoian, who is leaving our group to pursue his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley.May 18, 2007
Congratulations to Hongliang, David, and Phil, who recently passed their Doctoral Qualifying Examinations.May 10, 2007
Hongliang Xin was awarded first prize for student posters at the Annual Symposium of the Michigan Catalysis Society.May 10, 2007
Michigan Catalysis Society Annual Symposium
Congratulations to Hongliang Xin, whose poster was awarded first prize at the Annual Symposium of the Michigan Catalysis Society.March 16, 2007
Congratulations to Joydeep Mukherjee for his prize-winning poster at the Prospective Graduate Student Recruiting Weekend poster session.March 2, 2007
North American Catalysis Society
Eranda Nikolla will be presenting at the 20th North American Meeting of the North American Catalysis Society in Houston, Texas, June 17-22.February 9, 2007
Eranda Nikolla has been selected to receive a Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship from the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School.November 17, 2006
American Institute of Chemical Engineers National Conference
Siris Laursen's poster, “Oxide-Specific Oxidation States of Oxide-Supported Au Nanoparticles”, was selected as a winner of the Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division (CRE) Poster Award at the 2006 AIChE annual conference in San Francisco. Eranda Nikolla has been awarded the AIChE Catalysis and Reaction Engineering (CRE) division travel award.November 17, 2006
Siris Laursen's poster, “Oxide-Specific Oxidation States of Oxide-Supported Au Nanoparticles”, was selected as a winner of the Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division (CRE) Poster Award at the 2006 AIChE annual conference in San Francisco.October 13, 2006
Welcome to first-year Ph.D. students Phil Christopher and David Ingram, who have recently joined the Linic Research Group.May, 2006
Michigan Catalysis Society Annual Symposium
Eranda Nikolla has been awarded the Outstanding Student Presentation award at annual Michigan Catalysis Society (MCS) meeting.- Prof. Suljo Linic has been awarded the NSF CAREER grant for 2006-2011. This research will focus on the chemistry of functioning nanomaterials.
- Eranda Nikolla has been awarded the Outstanding Student Presentation award at annual Michigan Catalysis Society (MCS) meeting.
- Eranda Nikolla has been awarded the AIChE Catalysis and Reaction Engineering (CRE) division travel award.



























