Caltech Together: Silicon Valley
“Local and On-demand Production of Critical Chemicals”
Thursday, March 19, 2026
5:30 – 7:00 p.m.
To attend, please click this link to register for the webinar.
Following the webinar, join us for a post-event social via Zoom, where you’ll have the opportunity to mingle with fellow alumni and speak with the presenter. We look forward to seeing you!
Peter Tong
“Local and On-demand Production of Critical Chemicals“
by Karthish Manthiram, Chemical Engineering Executive Officer
Chemical synthesis produces lots of carbon dioxide worldwide. This happens not only because the processes use lots of energy, but also because hydrocarbon feedstocks can be over-oxidized or used as hydrogen sources.
Using renewable electricity to drive chemical synthesis may overcome these challenges. It can enable chemical production at benign conditions, using sustainable inputs.
We are developing an electrosynthetic toolkit in which distributed feedstocks, including carbon dioxide, dinitrogen, water, and renewable electricity, can be converted into diverse fuels, chemicals, and materials.
In this presentation, we will present progress from our laboratory on making ammonia from nitrogen fixation at ambient conditions. Specifically, we have studied a continuous lithium-based approach to produce ammonia and mapped out the reaction steps that determine how selective the process is. We have also developed non-aqueous gas-diffusion electrodes that produce ammonia at high rates under ambient conditions, and we are exploring ways to replace lithium with cheaper metals.
We will also discuss using water as a sustainable source of oxygen atom to convert propylene into propylene oxide, enabling such production in smaller and local factories.
These findings are part of a broader effort to develop electrosynthetic methods that could lead to local and on-demand production of critical chemicals and materials.
About the Speaker
Karthish is the Bren Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, and the Executive Officer for Chemical Engineering at Caltech. The Manthiram Lab develops electrified catalysts for sustainable chemical manufacturing, with a focus on producing essential molecules used in plastics, fertilizers, and other materials, using renewable feedstocks.
Karthish received his BS in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University in 2010 and his PhD in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley in 2015 with Professor Paul Alivisatos. He then completed a one-year postdoc at Caltech with Professor Robert H. Grubbs.
In 2017, he joined MIT as an Assistant Professor. In 2021, he returned to Caltech as a full professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry. In 2022, he was appointed Director of the Solar Science and Catalysis Centre in the Resnick Sustainability Institute. In 2025, he was named the Bren Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry and began serving as Executive Officer for Chemical Engineering.
Karthish’s research and teaching have received wide recognition, including the Infosys Prize, Moore Inventor Fellowship, DOE Early Career Award, NSF CAREER Award, Sloan Research Fellowship, Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science, Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the MIT Chemical Engineering Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, and the MIT Teaching with Digital Technology Award.
To attend, please click this link to register for the webinar.
Our Alumni Volunteers
The following alumni work together to serve you: Avni Gandhi, Dave Adler, Eilleen Zhang, Jane Frommer, Ralph Pursifull, Reeya Chenanda, Susan Huynh, and Peter Tong.