Meet new faculty member Dr. Gyorgy Szekely

17 February, 2019

​The AMPM center is very pleased to announce that Dr. Gyorgy Szekely has joined the center as an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering. He will continue his research in the development of innovative methodologies to enhance sustainable separation processes.

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Prof. Szekely leads the Sustainable Separation Engineering Research Group at the AMPM Center. The group focuses on sustainable separations through the synergistic combination of materials science and chemical engineering.
 
“The translation of green chemistry principles into sustainable engineering solutions by Sustainable Separation Engineering research group will open new avenues and trigger new collaborations in the AMPM Center and beyond”, Prof. Szekely explains.
 
AMPM Center director, Prof. Mohamed Eddaoudi, welcomes Prof. Szekely.

“I am very delighted to welcome Gyorgy as a faculty member in the AMPM; Prof. Szekely research interests will broaden the scope of our center to include addressing various energy-intensive liquid separations. I have no doubt in my mind that Gyorgy research will address various challenges pertaining to energy security and environmental sustainability”

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Tackling Industrial Separation Challenges

The group will develop green methodologies for membrane fabrication employing renewable resources and more efficient technologies. A special emphasis will be placed on sustainable process development for catalytic and pharmaceutical separations enabled by the next generation of organic solvent nanofiltration membranes.

Prof. Szekely has been closely working with companies such as Hovione, GSK, Richter Gedeon, Victrex and Cenovus Energy to tackle these industrial separation challenges.

"Sustainable production of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and clean water are largely impacted by the efficiency of separation processes in product supply chains. The conventional separation processes can account for as much as 80% of the total manufacturing costs, contributing approximately 10% of the world's energy consumption", he notes.

Prof. Szekely received his first degree in Chemical Engineering from the Technical University of Budapest and earned his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry under the European Commission's Marie Curie Actions from the Technical University of Dortmund. He worked as an Early Stage Researcher in Hovione PharmaScience in Lisbon, and an IAESTE Fellow at the University of Tokyo. He was a Postdoctoral Research Associate working with Prof. Andrew Livingston on molecular level separations in Imperial College London. He was a Lecturer in Chemical Engineering at The University of Manchester between 2014 and 2019 and remained a Visiting Academic since then. He was the recipient of the Distinguished Visiting Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and also served as an Adjunct Faculty at Saveetha University in Chennai between 2016 and 2018. He was appointed a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) in the United Kingdom.

If you would like to learn more about his professional and academic background, visit Prof. Szekely's online profile