Dr. Xiangkun (Elvis) Cao

Senior Schmidt Science Fellow, Schmidt Sciences & Rhodes Trust

Bio

Dr. Xiangkun (Elvis) Cao (https://www.elviscao.com/) is a Senior Schmidt Science Fellow (SSF), a lifelong fellowship by Schmidt Sciences in partnership with the Rhodes Trust. Mentored by SSF Academic Council’s Founding Chair, Professor Sir Keith Burnett, Elvis pursues his independent research vision of integrated carbon capture and utilization at MIT and builds independent collaboration with researchers across three continents. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University, working with Professor David Erickson, focusing on optofluidics. Dr. Cao secured $750K USD in grant funding as the PI/Co-PI from the Commission for Environmental Cooperation and the Carbontech Development Initiative by NYSERDA, among others. Dr. Cao has been named an Activate Fellow, an MIT Climate & Sustainability Consortium Impact Fellow, a Carbon Removal Justice Fellow, and a German Chancellor Fellow by the Humboldt Foundation. Cao has received Forbes 30 Under 30 in Energy for North America, World Energy Council’s Future Energy Leader (FEL-100), Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings Young Scientist, CAS Future Leader, ME Rising Stars by UC Berkeley, and MSE Rising Stars by CMU, Stanford, and MIT. Besides research, Cao was inducted into the Edward A. Bouchet Honor Society for his service to first-generation, low-income (FGLI) students.

Title

Surface and Structure Engineering for A Decarbonized Future

Abstract

In this talk, I will describe several of the ways we have been able to leverage surface and structure engineering in designing scalable devices to solve our grand challenges in climate and sustainability. First, I will introduce our work on surface engineering of waveguides for enhanced photothermal catalysis by photon engineering, along with how the reactor technology was upscaled through the $20M Carbon XPRIZE, a global competition for breakthrough technologies in CO2 conversion. I will then talk about foam structure engineering of biomimetic reactors for enhanced solar-driven plasmonic catalysis by increasing light transport, reactant flow, and fluid-solid energy exchange. Second, I will introduce our work on surface engineering of polyester membranes for enhanced particulate matter filtration, with high removal efficiency and low air resistance. Finally, I will talk about opportunities for retrofitting mobile direct air capture (DAC) of CO2 for distributed applications, such as sniffing and capturing CO2 by unmanned aerial vehicles with integrated DAC units.