-2018-

2018.07.12 Kasun’s team won the 1st EFCATS Young Generation Catalysis Challenge organized by Prof. Bert Weckhuysen, Prof. Harry Bitter, Prof. Fabrizio Cavani, and Prof. Justin Hargreaves held at Wageningen.
1st prize (500 Euros each): Kasun Gunasooriya (Belgium), Katarzyna Adamska (Poland), Lars Kiewidt (The Netherlands), Mirtha Alejandra (Portugal), and Eleni Bletsa (Greece).

2018.04.15 Last day of ‘Oppervlakfenomenen en katalyse – Surface phenomena and catalysis’ class for this semester.

2018.03.16 Kasun and Pedro Mendes (LCT) are selected to represent Belgium (total 2 candidates per country) for the upcoming European Federation of Catalysis Societies EFCATS Young Generation Catalysis Challenge. This challenge provides a unique opportunity to strengthen the interactions and to more fully integrate the younger generation into the European catalysis community. This challenge will be held at Wageningen University and Research (WUR), The Netherlands from 9–11 July 2018.

-2017-

2017.12.08 Kasun’s work was presented as an invited lecture titled “Reaction Mechanisms in C1 Chemistry: Fischer–Tropsch Synthesis” at Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society (FHI), Berlin.

2017.11.02 Kasun gave two oral presentations during the 2017 AIChE Annual Meeting at Minneapolis.
1) Reaction mechanism and microkinetics of the cobalt catalyzed Fischer−Tropsch Synthesis link
Session: Reaction Chemistry and Engineering I
Date: Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Session time: 8.44 AM − 9.06 AM
Location: Minneapolis convention centre, L100B
2) CO adsorption on platinum and cobalt: Site preference and coverage effects link
Session: New Developments in Computational Catalysis II
Date: Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Session time: 2.43 AM − 3.00 AM
Location: Minneapolis convention centre, L100E

Selected highlights from the 2017 AIChE Annual Meeting in Minneapolis.

2017 AIChE Annual Meeting

with my undergrad mentor Prof. Saif Khan from NUS and Prof. Rudi Gunawan from ETH Zürich.

with Prof. Alexis Bell from UC Berkley and Dr. Vladimir Galvita from LCT.

dinner with Prof. Jean-Sabin McEwen group from Washington State University.

with Prof. Nobert Kruse from Washington State University.

with Prof. Dragomir Bukur from Texas A&M University at Qatar & Dr. Wenping Ma from University of Kentucky.

with Prof. Samir Mushrif group from NTU, Singapore.

2017.06.23 Kasun’s first book chapter titled ‘Tuning the Activity of Supported Nanoparticles Through Charge Transfer’ is now published in the book ‘Nanotechnology in Catalysis: Applications in the Chemical Industry, Energy Development, and Environment Protection’ edited by Prof. Sels & Van de Voorde. link

2017.05.20 Kasun gave a TEDx talk at TEDxGhent main event! ”Hacking the carbon cycle using computers”

2017.03.28 Kasun won the TEDxGhent Ph.D./PostDoc Contest!

2017.03.06 Kasun has been selected to participate in the TEDxGhent Ph.D./PostDoc Contest 2017. link

2017.02.15 Kasun gave a pitch and presented a poster during Ghent University FEA Research Symposium 2017. link