Event
Chemical Society Seminar: Jesse Greener - Beyond biochemistry: combining analytical chemistry and microfluidics to study 鈥渓iving catalytic materials"
Tuesday, November 26, 2019 13:00to14:30
Maass Chemistry Building
Room 10, 801 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3A 0B8, CA
Abstract:
Despite the staggering advances of modern chemistry, its complexity and scale pale in comparison to the chemistry of Earth's biosphere, which for billions of years has been dominated by bacteria. Our group is interested in developing tools that can help chemists rediscover and harness the rich and wonderful chemistry presented by bacterial systems with an eye to finding sustainable solutions to certain pressing modern-day problems related to energy and environmental-remediation. To this end, we develop new analytical platforms to study "living catalytic materials" with the goal of advancing green chemistry.
In the first part of the talk, Jesse will demonstrate new methods developed in his laboratories that merge of microfluidics and analytical chemistry to help fuel a new wave of biofilm research. Presented will be new microfluidic platforms for in situ studies of pH mapping, electrochemical imaging and mechanical properties. In the second part of the talk, new results from an electrochemical microflow cell will be presented, which demonstrate the ability to optimize the performance of electroactive biofilms in microbial fuel cells at the kinetic level.
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Bio:
Jesse Greener graduated from the Chemical Physics program at the University of Waterloo and obtained a Ph.D. in surface science from department of Physics at the University of Western Ontario. His post-doctoral work in the department of Chemistry at the University of Toronto focused on development of microfluidic technology with in situ analytical measurements. Before leaving Toronto, Jesse co-founded FlowJEM Inc., a Toronto-based microfluidics foundry which specializes in custom prototyping in polymer-based materials. Jesse joined the department of Chemistry at Laval University in May 2012. He has been an associate professor since 2017, where he leads an active research group in analytical microfluidics and biomaterials. He is the winner of the 2013 New Researcher Award from Quebec鈥檚 science and technology agency, and a 2018 high risk/high reward Audace grant for his work in the area of bioenergy and new microfluidic methods to study of microbiological systems.