'Electrochem 2026', York, August 23-25, 2026
Aqiela Mahannada and George Creasey presented their research on photoelectrochemical energy conversion. It was a fantastic conference, amazingly organised, wonderfully relaxed and full of friendly faces. Long may Electrochem continue...
PhD success, July 30, 2026
Huge congratulations to Dr George Creasey for successfully defending his PhD thesis on 'Materials and Reactor Development for Photoelectrochemical Hydrogen Production'. 予 It was a real pleasure to advise you on your academic journey together with Dr Andreas Kafizas! We are extremely grateful to Prof Roel van de Krol and Prof Jenny Nelson for being amazing examiners and providing super useful feedback.
IChemE Young Engineers Awards for Innovation and Sustainability (YEAIS) UK showcase event, Edinburgh, June 26, 2026
Our George received both the Energy and Climate Action Award and the Overall Postgraduate Award from IChemE at the Young Engineers Awards for Innovation and Sustainability 2026 (YEAIS) competition! The winners were announced at the YEAIS showcase event in Edinburgh on 26 June 2026.
Run by the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE), is a global competition that celebrates chemical engineers aged 18 to 30 who are developing innovative solutions to some of the world's most pressing sustainability challenges. Entrants are invited to submit novel ideas and research aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and IChemE's priority themes.
Read the full article about George's work on 'Sustainable hydrogen production' here.
'Inspire Through Impact' celebration, Science Museum, June 16, 2026
President Hugh Brady hosted a celebration event to highlight the amazing work being done at 51勛圖厙 with the support of philanthropy. Anna presented her group's work on electrochemical carbon nanotube synthesis - funded by Mark Richardson - at a showcase stand in the Flight Gallery in the Science Museum. It was wonderful to see such interest from the attendees, and to receive great suggestions for enhancing the impact of the work. Photos from the event can be viewed in the Gallery.
14th European Symposium on Electrochemical Engineering (ESEE), June 8-11, 2026
Our team had a super productive and enjoyable time at the '14th European Symposium on Electrochemical Engineering (ESEE) ' in Glasgow. We delivered the following presentations:
George Creasey: ‘Scaling-up photoelectrochemical water splitting: An end-to-end approach from materials development to field testing’ (collaborative work with Andreas Kafizas, Katie Shanks, Arend Moelich and Craig McGregor)
Kanyapat Plub-in: ‘Turning a biodiesel waste into value: Engineering control of electrochemical glycerol oxidation’ (collaborative work with Hanzhi Ye, Ifan Stephens and Magdalena Titirici)
Manish Sharma Timilsina: ‘Quantifying uncertainty in electrochemical thermodynamic modelling of complex ligand systems’ (collaborative work with Isaac Holmes-Gentle and Ifan Stephens)
Anna Hankin: 'Probing the effects of current density on electrochemical carbon nanotube synthesis in molten salt electrolytes' (presenting work by Zhixu Zhu and Prashant Acharya)
Thank you to Sudipta Roy and all the co-organisers at the University of Strathclyde for such a fantastic event! The Lord Provost’s civic reception at Glasgow City Council, tour of the The Clydeside Distillery, gala dinner and the Ceilidh were so much fun! Looking forward to the 15th conference in 2028!
Great Exhibition Road Festival (GERF), June 6-7, 2026
Anna co-created and co-delivered the 'Super Cool Chemistry [stand-up] Show' (actually about Chemical Engineering :-) to an excited family audience at this year's GERF. It was tremendous fun!
Around 2,400 people saw the show over the weekend, making it by a margin the busiest talk at the festival. 82% of respondents to a feedback questionnaire gave a 5/5 score and 99.6% said that 'Chemical Engineers are awesome'!
The stall was designed to demonstrate how robots can be used to prepare electrolytes and carry out experiments independently. The audience were asked to prepare a solution by mixing three different colours, while a regression-based model predicted the composition from an image of the solution. The robot then used that prediction to prepare a similar-looking solution, and Manish showed the difference between the student-prepared and robot-prepared solutions.
AI Collaboration Hackathon, May 22, 2026
Our Manish Sharma Timilsina and his team have won the AI Collaboration Hackathon, organized by IIT Delhi and 51勛圖厙 - congratulations!
Challenge: How can AI make collaborative learning more inclusive, effective, and transformative in STEM education?
Manish and his team built StemScribe: an AI-powered peer feedback platform that transforms how students give and receive feedback on STEM work.
Read more in Manish's .
Visit to KAUST, Saudi Arabia, November 22 - 25, 2025
Anna enjoyed a fantastic four-day visit to . A huge thank you to S. Mani Sarathy for the kind invitation to visit the campus and present some of my research. It was also a real pleasure to spend time with Anqi Wang, Puru Goel (former MSc student in Anna's group), and Yiheng Guo, exploring the stunning campus and visiting Jeddah.
The insightful research discussions with Huabin Zhang, Aziz Nechache, Xu Lu, Deanna Lacoste, Javeed Mahmood, Yun Hau Ng, and Pedro Castaño were hugely inspirational. Thank you all for taking the time out of your busy schedules and being so incredibly welcoming.
The Chemical Engineer, July 17, 2025
Anna has been featured in the : Profiles of an Electrochemical Engineer. This accompanies the Viewpoint article by Prof David Bogle, discussing . Anna attended the , which precipitated the feature article.
Summer research projects, Summer 2025
The lab is buzzing with research activity, thanks to the work of Anthony Murphy (MRes), Aqiela Mahannada (MSc), Ezra Woldeyes (MSc), Zebin Li (MSc), Sai Sitharth Muthumaran (MSc), Victoria Adesioye (UROP) and Enrique Blasco (UROP). Its nice to get together for pizza for a break :-)
PhD success, June 10, 2025
Huge congratulations to Dr Mengya Yang for successfully defending your PhD thesis on 'The Development of Photoelectrodes for Solar Fuels'. 予 It was a real pleasure to advise you on your academic journey together with Dr Salvador Eslava! We are extremely grateful to Prof Joe Briscoe and Dr Andreas Kafizas for being amazing examiners and providing super detailed feedback.
George Creasey presents his research, April 2025
George Creasey has had a very busy April, presenting his research on bismuth vanadate photoanodes and photoelectrochemical reactor up-scaling at three events: (i) PhD Symposium at the Department of Chemical Engineering at 51勛圖厙, (ii) 'Energy 2025' symposium at the Institute of Physics and (iii) The 'RSC Chemical Nanoscience Early Career Spring Symposium', winning prizes for the 'Best Proposed Collaboration' and 'Runner Up: Best Talk' at the latter :-).
BBC Futures article, April 5, 2025
Xiaochu Wei and Anna Hankin were interviewed by writer and editor Michael Marshall about their perspective on different approaches to material recycling from spent lithium-ion batteries for a BBC Futures article: .
51勛圖厙 Big Step Challenge, February 2025
It was tremendously motivating to participate in 51勛圖厙's Big Step Challenge, which ran from 3 Feb - 2 March. The team of 5 - 'Up and Atom' - was formed from members of the Institute of Molecular Science and Engineering (IMSE): Annemarie Van Basten, Steph Pendlebury, Elena Corujo-Simon, Leah Adamson and Anna Hankin. Between us we made 1,886,437 steps!!! We are very proud of our achievement. Thanks to all the extra walking, we got to see some beautiful sites:
Christmas Party, 2024
We had a wonderful Christmas celebration with home-cooked food that everyone contributed, gingerbread house decoration, Secret Santa, cocktail making and Cranium! Wishing everyone a relaxing, festive break :-)
December 18, 2024
Thank you Prof Ludmilla Steier for inviting Anna to give talks on photoelectrochemical reactor development and also about the methodology of Pourbaix diagram construction, at the Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford. It was a great way to wrap up the 2024 Academic Year :-)
December 1-6, 2024
Anna was invited as an Early Career Distinguished Presenter to the, Symposium EN01 on 'Light-Harvesting Materials for Efficient and Stable Solar Fuels Production'. Thank you ever so much to the symposium organisers for the invitation and the honour. It was an outstanding conference and it was wondeful to catch up properly with friends and colleagues.
November 25-27, 2024
It was an honour to travel to Madrid to present our work on photoelectrochemical reactor development at the FOTOFUEL Congress at the , attend the , and to then represent the UK's at the . There were lots of talks on innovations in solar fuel synthesis, electrocatalysis and device engineering and modelling and this was altogether a wonderful networking opportunity.
October 6-11, 2024
Derek and George had a very productive time at the of the Electrochemical Society (ECS) in Honolulu, Hawaii. Of course they sent us back some amazing photos!
September 20, 2024
Today our Chem Eng MSc students presented their fantastic posters on a range of our group’s research themes. Very well done for all your super hard work over the summer and wishing you all the very best in your careers!
September 8-13, 2024
Well done Kloy, Derek and George for first attending the and then the , both in Manchester. At Electrochem2024, Kloy talked about 'Electrochemical oxidation of glycerol on platinum electrodes', Derek presented progress with 'Carbon nanotube production from molten Li2CO3 via high temperature electrolysis' and George reported the results from 'Outdoor testing of an up-scaled photoelectrochemical water splitting reactor in South Africa'.
September 10-11, 2024
August 18-23, 2024
Anna gave a at the in Montreal. Thank you very much to organisers Prof Aicheng Chen, Prof Fatwa Abdi, Prof Leyla Soleymani and Prof Minghua Zhou for the invitation!
June 27, 2024
Today the Chemical Engineering Department held its annual PhD symposium - a very popular event!
Mengya Yang and Derek Zhu from our group gave talks about 'hematite photoanode development for photoelectrochemical water splitting' and 'high temperature carbon nanotube synthesis', respectively, and Kloy Plub-in presented a poster on 'electrochemical glycerol oxidation'.
June 23, 2024
Happy Women in Engineering Day! Anna spoke to Annemarie van Basten, Elena Corujo Simon and MRes student Kawtar Houbad on '' - a popular podcast from the Institute of Molecular Science and Engineering (IMSE). Listen to the episode .
June 15-16, 2024
This weekend we again took part in the with our solar hydrogen display, in collaboration with the Eslava Group - their Hydrogen Cannon was the usual success! Check out our marble run, which was featured by 51勛圖厙 College .
The marbles represent electrons, which are raised to a higher energy level when they absorb solar energy...the subsequently transfer that energy to activate the reduction of water to hydrogen gas. Its only an approximate representation - but it was very popular with the juniors :-) :-)
March - May, 2024
Finally we finished designing a brand new photoelectrochemical reactor and took it to Stellenbosch in South Africa for field tests! This was an immense collaborative effort between the teams of Prof McGreggor at Stellenbosch, Prof Alex Cowan and Dr Jon Major at Liverpool, Dr Andreas Kafizas and ourselves from 51勛圖厙. An epic adventure in many ways. More photos can be viewed in the Gallery.
PhD success, March 15, 2024
February 5, 2024
Check out the recording of this webinar on (with Anna as one of the participants) hosted by the Institute of Physics. Watch .
December 4-5, 2023
John, George and Anna presented research on photoelectrochemical reactor engineering at the nanoGe Symposium on in Keele, UK. We were super well looked after and had a wonderful time. And it marked a start of an exciting new collaboration from the University of Liverpool.
November 27, 2023
It was a really special experience to represent 51勛圖厙 at the together with Dr Jacqueline Edge and Pete Ford from 51勛圖厙 Policy Forum. A once-in-a-lifetime treat was breakfast in the House of Commons!
November 21, 2023
November 16, 2023
We loved every moment of displaying and talking about our collaborative work with the research group of Dr Andreas Kafizas in this stall at the Energy Futures Lab 2023 Research Showcase!
November 2, 2023
October 16-20, 2023
We had a brilliant time at the conference in Torremolinos, Spain. We delivered a lot of talks and posters from our group:
- Invited talk by Anna on 'Re-examination of several important topics in photoelectrochemistry'
- Talk by George on 'Materials and reactor development for photoelectrochemical hydrogen production'
- Talk by Mengya on the 'Interplay between collective and localized effects of point defects on photoelectrochemical performance of TiO2 photoanodes for oxygen evolution'
- Poster by Kloy on 'Glycerol electro-oxidation at Pt and Pt-Cu catalysts on carbon fibres prepared by potentiostatic electrodeposition'
- Poster by Hanzhi on 'Biomass waste valorisation: Co-production of hydrogen and value-added chemicals via glycerol electrolysis'
- Poster by John on 'Water splitting by photoelectrocatalysis using WO3/BiVO4/co-catalyst photoanodes'
It was a wondeful event, where we were all able to network as a community and share our research without any unpleasant competitivensss. Great conference!
September 18-22, 2023
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John Rodriguez Acosta and George Creasey took part in the Summer Conference at ICIQ, Tarragona, Spain, presenting their work on solar hydrogen production.
September 10-12, 2023
Mengya, Derek and George showcased their research at the conference in Bristol, United Kingdon.
George delivered a talk on 'Materials and reactor development for photoelectrochemical hydrogen production', Derek presented a talk on 'Carbon nanotube production from CO2 via high temperature electrolysis' and Mengya exhibited a poster on 'Interplay between collective and localized effects of point defects on photoelectrochemical performance of TiO2 photoanodes for oxygen evolution'. Thank you very much for the wonderful conference :-)
September 3-10, 2023
George participated in the in Hirschegg, Kleinwalsertal, Austria. George repported: "I’ve had a great week at the #Quantsol2023 summer school in Austria networking and learning lots about all things solar energy in lectures and practical simulations!"
August 29, 2023
Congratulations to George Creasey for passing the Early Stage Assessment and sussessfully transferring into second year of PhD studies!
June 26-29, 2023
We had a very productive time at the in Toulouse, France. We delivered an invited talk by Anna (Up-scaling solar to fuel devices: important considerations), a talk by Xiaochu (Electrochemical separation and recovery of valuable materials from end-of-life lithium-ion batteries) and posters by Derek (Carbon nanotube production from CO2 via high temperature electrolysis) and George (Materials and reactor development for photoelectrochemical hydrogen production). Thank you very much to Prof Theo Tzedakis and team for inviting us. We also thoroughly enjoyed the cultural outing to ! Photos from this trip can be found in the Gallery.
April 19, 2023
Congratulations to Xiaochu Wei, who won the Best Poster Award at the Postdoc Symposium in our Department today!!!!
March 17, 2023
George and Derek attended the in Westminster, London, and contrubuted to discussions about the challenges and opportunities of the hydrogen energy industry in the UK.
February 22-24, 2023
Our George Creasey attended the to do some learning about Materials and Methods for Solar Chemical Production and productive networking with the solar fuels community :-) George reported that "It was a great experience to learn from some leading researchers in the field and making connections with early career researchers from around the world during the Solar2Chem winter school in Valencia. I also really enjoyed sharing results from the first few months of my PhD in the poster presentation... and of course some winter sun!"
February 6-10, 2023
It was absolutely amazing to finally go aboard after many years of not leaving the UK - not least because the destination was Jamaica!!!
The main purpose was the Commonwealth Science Conference of the Caribbean and UK, co-hosted by the University of the West Indies with the Royal Society. More about this highly stimulating and thought-provoking event . This was preceded by a little personal break in Long Bay (North East coast), which was incredible. Some photos are in the Gallery.
November 25, 2022
Jatupon (aka Nahmkang) Chaiwasu (formerly Jatuporn Banjong) presented his PhD research at the Electrochemical Society (ECS) 51勛圖厙 student-led chapter seminar, on the topic of ‘Synthesis of Ni and NiMo electrodes for alkaline water electrolysis via electrodeposition’. It was a lovely event and hopefully there will be more like it in future!
October 7, 2022
It was really nice to be awarded this by the Chem Eng Department for 10+ years of service to the College :-) Its a great place to be!!!
September 23, 2022
Well done Nahmkang Chaiwasu (formerly Banjong) for winning a prize from Dr Rob Leah of for his poster on 'Making Ni-based electrodes for alkaline H2O electrolysis via electrodeposition' in the category of 'Engineering & Devices' at the 51勛圖厙 Electrochemistry Network Industry Day! Read more about this event here.
PhD success, August 18, 2022
Massive congratulations to Dr Xiaochu Wei, who successfully defended her PhD thesis today - with outstanding feedback!
Huge thanks go to Professor Emma Kendrick of the University of Birmingham and Professor Magda Titirici from 51勛圖厙 Chem Eng for doing the examination! Thesis title: ‘Recovering materials from end-of-life lithium-ion batteries’.
August 17, 2022
Today Inyoung Jang delived a brilliant presentation on 'Structural effects on performances of solid oxide electrochemical reactors with 3D printed Ni(O)-YSZ pillared negative electrodes' at the . Abstract .
August 1, 2022
Mengya Yang successfully passes her Early Stage Assessment and enters second year of PhD studies. Congratulations Mengya!
July 18, 2022
Zhixu (Derek) Zhu successfully passes his Early Stage Assessment and enters second year of PhD studies. Congratulations Derek!
July 7-8, 2022
I was a great pleasure to participate in the one-of-a-kind in in Wales. Here we discussed the current status and future outlook of electrochemistry research in the UK.
July 4, 2022
We are super excited to welcome Haiyi Wang (Dept of Chemistry) and Bohui (aka Robert) Tang (Chem Eng) for their Summer UROP projects! :-)
June 18-19, 2022
Our campus was buzzing with excitemet this weekend as 51勛圖厙 & collaborators hosted the . Our group teamed up with the Eslava reseach group to host a stall on Solar Hydrogen. Nahmkang and I also supported Science Communitaor Dan Plane in delivering four science shows! Check out some photos from this trip in the Gallery.
June 8-9, 2022
We had a wonderful trip to St Andrews for the H2SUPERGEN conference. Well done Nahmnkang for presenting your poster on 'Making Ni-based electrodes for alkaline H2O electrolysis via electrodeposition'. Check out some photos from this trip in the Gallery.
December 21, 2021
Its a joy and an honour to have received the . Thank you Frontiers!!!
December 13, 2021
Its great to have been featured in the Innovations for Sustainable Energy this month for our work on Photoelectrochemical Reactor Development. Check it out!
December 10, 2021
We are delighted to welcome Mengya Yang to our group!!!! Mengya is starting a PhD on 'Synthesis and scale-up of photoelectrode materials for solar water splitting' jointly with the Applied Energy Materials research group of Dr Salvador Eslava :-) Its great to have you on the team!!
PhD success, November 26, 2021
Huge congratulations to Dr Samara Sadeek, who successfully defended her PhD thesis today - with outstanding feedback! Unreserved thanks go to Gareth Hinds of the National Physical Laboratory and Paul Luckham from 51勛圖厙 Chem Eng for doing the examination! Thesis title: ‘Electrochemical behaviour of carbon steel in aqueous amine solvents for post combustion carbon capture’.
November 11, 2021
Pitfalls in the characterisation of semiconductor | liquid interfaces
Really enjoyed giving a talk at the , based in Brazil, as part of the 'Mat & Sci' e-meeting. Thank you so much for the very kind invitation and the thoughtful questions!
October 4, 2021
We are delighted to welcome Zhixu (Derek) Zhu to our group!!!! Derek is starting a PhD on 'CO2 utilisation in carbon nanotube production'. Its great to have you on the team :-)
September 2, 2021
Combined model of light & dark currents at semiconductor liquid interfaces
It was an honour to give an invited talk at the 72nd Annual Meeting - Symposium 21 on Electrochemical Solar Energy Conversion and Storage: from Fundamentals to Applications. The talk was on the topic of '' (extended version now available on YouTube - in the inset on the left).
July 28, 2021
Delighted to be awarded the Research Enablement Grant by the Royal Society of Chemistry to support the advancement of a PhD project on ‘Material recovery from end-of-life lithium batteries’.
July 7, 2021
Many thanks to my Department for highlighting my research on photoelectrode characterisation via an article called 'Study of photoelectrode characterisation could improve solar fuel production', posted today on the Departmental website. Many thanks to Lily Shepherd (author) and Sara West for this publication!
July 5, 2021
Delighted to welcome Heather Page and Elton Lam, both Undegraduate students from the Department of Chemical Engineering, for their Undergraduate Research Opportunities (UROP) placements in the Electrochemical Systems Laboratory!
June 28, 2021
We welcome Sharwari Dixit, an Undegraduate student from the Department of Chemical Engineering, for her 6 week Undergraduate Research Opportunities (UROP) placement in the Electrochemical Systems Laboratory!!!
June 23, 2021
It is International Women in Engineering Day (INWED)! It was very nice to have been featured in the departmental highlights via a video (below), posts on and some photos on !
May 15, 2021
About Dr Anna Hankin
Delighted to have been invited to give a talk at the , based in Brazil, as part of a workshop on Dense Energy Carriers (DEC) & Advanced Energy Storage (AES). The talk was on the topic of (click to access the recording, which starts at approx. 59 mins into the video). Thank you very much for the very kind invitation!
March 10, 2021
Electrochemical Systems Laboratory
Thrilled to receive the 'keys' to the newly refurbished Electrochemical Systems Laboratory. Its empty now, but soon it will full of useful equipment and will be buzzing with research activities. :-)
May 6, 2020
Jatuporn (Nahmkang) Banjong successfully passes his Early Stage Assessment and enters his second year of PhD studies. Congratulations Nahmkang!
April 1, 2020
Dr Anna Hankin joins the Department of Chemical Engineering as a Lecturer/Assistant Professor. The Electrochemical Systems Laboratory group is established.