On October 4, Zhaohui Liu successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation entitled "Mechanistic Investigation into the Conversion of Methanol to Hydrocarbons by Zeolite Catalysts" under the supervision of AMPM Prof. Yu Han. Zhaohui earned his B.Sc. in Chemistry from Ocean University of China and M.Sc. in Chemistry from China Xiamen University in 2010 and 2013 respectively.

Zhaohui's research interests are focused on zeolite-related heterogeneous catalysis, mainly including the controlled synthesis and characterization of different structured zeolites and understanding their structure-related influence on methanol to hydrocarbons conversion, and also studying the applications of hierarchical zeolites on the catalytic cracking reactions of crude oil for valuable olefins.

During his Ph.D. journey, Zhaohui achieved outstanding results. He has authored eleven articles in peer-refereed journals, five of them as the first author or co-first author, and also filed a US patent. He was also involved in an industrial project collaborated with Saudi Aramco.

Zhaohui is grateful for the support of Prof. Yu Han and group members over the last few years. Thanks to them, he has learned to work autonomously and develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

"As a Ph.D. student, we have to develop our abilities to solve problems. Prof. Yu Han works with the highest standards, so if you want to present results, you have to promote yourself to the highest level. He always gives us general guidelines, and we have to find all the evidence that support our research", he says.

After this stage, Zhaohui will continue his research career as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Delaware, US.

Congratulations, Dr. Liu!

AMPM Center wishes you all the best for the future.