TomKat Graduate Fellowships Awarded to Move Research Toward Translational Frontiers
Seeding the future
Six doctoral students have won graduate fellowships to explore and advance the translational aspects of their research towards solutions that address real world energy and environmental challenges. The 2025 graduate fellows are building Stanford capabilities and collaborations with external partners as they work to improve the efficiency of turbomachinery, reduce the energy required for chemical separations, increase enhanced geothermal energy recovery, advance a hydrogen fuel generation technology that yields secondary benefits with lower emissions, enable construction project optimization, and develop solutions to protect against megafires.
“These impressive graduate student researchers are attempting to solve complex challenges to unlock technologies that could have a meaningful impact on sustainability.” said Matt Kanan, Professor of Chemistry and Director of the TomKat Center. “The fellowship allows them to focus beyond the lab toward the real-world constraints their solutions must navigate.”
Starting this fall, the six new fellows will receive support through the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy’s Graduate Fellowships for Translational Research. The program provides full support for two years, providing tuition, stipends, and an additional $5,000 of research funding and fosters a supportive community that cultivates a translational research mindset.
Established in 2020, these fellowships have been awarded to 24 Stanford doctoral students entering their third year or beyond. The fellowships may also serve as a runway for their possible participation in other Stanford Doerr School for Sustainability and University programs like the Sustainability Accelerator, Ecopreneurship fellowships, OTL’s HIT program, or the TomKat Center’s Innovation Transfer Program, which helps Stanford teams commercialize their technologies and innovative business models. Since 2013, TomKat has awarded $7.6 million across 132 Innovation Transfer grants. Collectively, these ventures have grown to receive nearly $4 billion in follow-on funding and a combined valuation of $9.46 billion.
Forging a path
The TomKat graduate fellows are working in labs across campus and are tackling a broad range of problems.
Supercritical carbon dioxide’s (sCO2) favorable thermodynamic and chemical properties make it an effective working fluid in a variety of energy applications like waste heat recovery, concentrated solar power, geothermal energy, and nuclear power. Anjini Chandra, a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering advised by Professor Sanjiva Lele, is contributing to a high-fidelity, high-resolution numerical framework to generate datasets for flows of compressible, turbulent carbon dioxide near its critical condition. The framework and datasets will inform optimal operating conditions for the design of efficient compressor turbomachinery.
Henry Moise is a Ph.D. candidate in chemical engineering, co-advised by Professors Matteo Cargnello and Arun Majumdar. He is exploring how to optimize and scale a process that uses methane pyrolysis to generate hydrogen (H2) and solid carbon products like synthetic graphite and carbon nanotubes. This process dramatically reduces the CO2 emitted as compared with the conventional steam reforming process and provides value-added materials. The fellowship will help optimize the process intensification for maximum efficiency and explore the externalization of this technology beyond Stanford.
Aiming to reduce the threat and impact of megafires, Philippe Roberge, a Ph.D. Student in the Earth System Science Department advised by Professor Rob Jackson, will leverage collaborations with the US Forest Service, advancements in aerial and satellite imaging technology, artificial intelligence, and traditional fieldwork to devise highly scalable, low-cost solutions to protect forest ecosystems and minimize the socio-economic toll caused by catastrophic wildland fires.
Sarah Sausan is a Ph.D. candidate advised by Professor Roland Horne in the Energy Science and Engineering Department. Her research focuses on multi-scale fracture characterization in enhanced geothermal systems (EGS). In collaboration with national laboratories, government agencies, and industry partners, the fellowship will allow her to conduct and analyze tracer tests in operational EGS fields to validate and improve the modeling of fracture flow and heat transfer, enabling the broader deployment of geothermal energy.
Applying recent advances in 3D and 4D computer vision along with natural language models to improve efficiencies within the construction industry, Emily Steiner, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical engineering advised by Professor Iro Armeni, is developing a queryable tool to digitize and automate construction progress monitoring. The holistic, data-driven system is designed for ease of use by construction site managers and will enable more proactive decision-making and reduce errors, resulting in less rework, waste, and environmental impacts.
Ruilin Yin is a Ph.D. candidate in chemistry advised by Professor Yan Xia. With chemical separations accounting for a significant portion of industrial energy consumption in the U.S., this research aims to dramatically reduce that energy use by developing novel microporous ladder polymer materials that can be used as membranes in chemical separations. The research group has developed a platform of next-generation membranes with early results that show record-high permeability and selectivity with excellent long-term stability across a wide range of gas separations. The fellowship will allow for continued innovation of the materials and the exploration of partnerships with scale-up manufacturers.
