Members of the Team

By supporting industrial research and development, creating partnerships with State and Federal agencies, and overcoming key technical obstacles to fuel cell utilization, the Fuel Cells Research can become an invaluable technological incubator for the fuel cell industry.

Faculty

Sirivatch Shimpalee

Research Professor and Director of Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Center. His research interests are in the areas of renewable energy and alternative energy especially in hydrogen fuel cells, batteries, and bioenergy. His expertise is numerical analyses focusing on the transport phenomena. These studies have included one dimensional theoretical mathematical model to three dimensional CFD simulations. He was one of the first frontier researchers who established three dimensional models for fuel cell to predict flow behaviors along with electrochemical phenomena inside the fuel cell.

Ben Meekins

Research Assistant Professor and Deputy Director of the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Center. His background is in photovoltaics, solar fuel conversion, and catalysis. As a member of the Chemical Engineering department at the University of South Carolina, his research interests include photovoltaics, electrocatalytic water splitting, remediation of waste streams to high-value products, and development of new electrochemical processes.

Research Associate

Kris Likit-anurak

Kris has Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from University of South Carolina. His research interest in the area of high temperature proton exchange membrane for fuel cell and electrolyzer, sea water electrolyzer, and electrochemical model in Computational Fluid Dynamics simulation.

Hunter Teel

Hunter holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of South Carolina. His research interests include multiscale modeling with applications in batteries, electromagnetic heating, and biogeochemical systems.

Graduate Students

Chanatip Dejkajorn

Chanatip received his Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Chemical Process and Environment from King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, Thailand. His research focuses on induction heating simulation, including coil design optimization, electromagnetic modeling.

Olusegun Felix

Segun has his BS in Chemical Engineering from Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. His research interests are process and techno-economy in electrochemical systems.

Phuree (Barry) Fongsamootr

Barry earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Oklahoma and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of South Carolina, focusing on modeling proton-exchange membrane fuel cells and microstructures for multi-scale transport analysis

Dhairya Shah

Dhairya received his Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from University of South Carolina. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Chemical Engineering. His research interests are in development of the model reaction of liquids and gases in a chromatographic column for the separation of various gases and investigation of catalyst-coated membrane degradation in heavy-duty fuel cell vehicles.

Undergraduate Students

Sam Costantino

Aiden Farrell

Riley Goodwin

Ainsley Reed

Sarya Ruth

Dominique Smith

Carolina Tiller

Alumni

Gaduation, May 2025

Graduation, August 2024

Graduation, May 2024

Graduation, Dec 2023

Graduation, May 2023

Graduation, May 2022

Graduation May 2022

Graduation, December 2022

Graduation, May 2021.

Graduate Student

DEVELOPMENT OF A MULTI-SCALE MECHANO-ELECTROCHEMICAL BATTERY MODEL

Graduation, Summer 2021

Graduation, May 2020

Multi-scale Modeling Transport Study inside Porous Layer of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell using Direct Numerical Simulation

Graduation, May 2020

Graduation, May 2017

Predicting Volume Change in Li-Ion Batteries

Graduation, May, 2017

Mathematical Modeling of Transport and Corrosion Phenomenon Inside High Temperature Molten Salt Systems

Graduation, December, 2016

Novel Biofabrication Technologies to Recapitulate In Vivo Geometrics in Collagen Hydrogels

Graduation, December, 2014

Synthesis and Characterization of Catalyst Supports used in Direct Methanol Fuel Cells

Graduation, December, 2011

Catalyst Development for Electrolysis in Thermochemical Cycles

Graduation, August, 2011

Effect of Impurities on PEM Fuel Cells Performance

Graduation, May, 2011

H₂ Production via SO₂ Electrolysis

Graduation, May, 2009

Characterizing a Direct Methanol Fuel Cell

Graduation, May, 2007

Effect of H₂S on PEM Fuel Cells Performance

Graduation, December, 2006

Non-Precious Metal Oxygen Catalysts for PEM Fuel Cells

Graduation, December, 2006 (co-adviser B. Popov)

Electrochemistry of Superoxide Ions in Room Temperature Ionic Liquids and Its Application to Green Engineering

Graduation, August, 2004

Electrochemical Removal of CO from Fuel-Cell Reformate

Graduation, December, 2003

Heat Generation in Lithium-Ion Batteries

Graduation, May, 2003 (co-adviser R. E. White)

Development of CO Tolerant Anodes for PEM Fuel Cells

Graduation, August, 2002 (co-adviser R. E. White)

Synthesis and Characterization of Materials for Electrochemical Supercapacitors

Graduation, August, 2000

Design and Operation of Electrochemical Flow Reactors

Graduation, August, 1998

Analysis of Lithium/Thionyl-Chloride Batteries

Graduation, August, 1998

Water Transport in PEM Anhydrous HCl Electrolyzers

Graduation, August, 1998

Research Collaborators and Visiting Scholars

A collaborator of Dr. John Weidner whose research activities include the synthesis and characterization of Perovskite materials as highly active electrocatalysts for cathode in Zinc-air rechargeable batteries and alkaline fuel cells.

A collaborator of Dr. Sirivatch Shimpalee whose research activities include biomas to bioenergy, fuel cells, energy storage system, and numerical simulation.

A collaborator of Dr. John Monnier, Dr. John Weidner, and Dr. Sirivatch Shimpalee whose research activities include the development of the catalyst systems having higher surface/volume ratios of Pt particles for ORR of PEM fuel cells. Electroless deposition (ED) is used as a catalyst preparation method.

A collaborator of Dr. Sirivatch Shimpalee whose research activities include the effect of custom gas diffusion medias on PEM fuel cell using hydrocarbon membrane, characterize the custom made MEAs, and using CFD tool to understand the local distributions on custom made MEAs.

A collaborator of Drs. John Monnier and John Weidner whose research activities include investigating the characteristics and catalytic properties of TiO2 supported bimetallic Pd-Ag catalysts prepared by electroless deposition method in the selective acetylene hydrogenation.

A collaborator of Drs. John Monnier, John Regalbuto, Chris Williams, and Sirivatch Shimpalee whose research activities include fundamental understanding of model system and experiment of Hydrodeoxygenation (HDD): Stirring reactor systems, feeding process, and analysis using gas chromatography with thermal conductivity detector.

A collaborator of Drs. John Monnier, John Regalbuto, Chris Williams, and Sirivatch Shimpalee whose research activities fundamental understanding of model system and experiment of Hydrodeoxygenation (HDD): Packed bed reactor system, feeding process, and Detector analysis using gas chromatography with thermal conductivity detector.

A collaborator of Dr. Sirivatch Shimpalee whose research activities include optimization of PEM Fuel Cell performance in single cell and stack and simulation of PEM Fuel Cell model.

Molinaroli College of Engineering and Computing