Alissa Park

The Ronald and Valerie Sugar Dean of UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

2018 Research Award Winner

Dr. Ah-Hyung (Alissa) Park is a leading expert on the forms that carbon takes in both engineered and natural systems as humans transform them to extract energy or produce materials and fuels. Her research focuses include alternative energy production and sustainable energy conversion pathways, with an emphasis on integrated carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS). She has made multifaceted contributions to various sustainable energy and environmental subjects, from novel materials for carbon capture to chemicals and fuels derived from renewable resources to create a new circular carbon economy. Current efforts include a fundamental understanding of chemical and physical interactions of natural and engineered materials with CO2, such as the development of liquid-like nanoparticle organic hybrid materials (NOHMs). She and her research group designed NOHMs with tailored chemical and physical properties for CO2 capture, and she is currently working on electrochemical reduction of CO2 to chemicals and fuels using NOHMs and renewable energy. Park’s group is also working on innovative chemical and fuel synthesis pathways using unconventional sources such as marine biomass, while minimizing environmental impacts. Park is the Ronald and Valerie Sugar Dean of UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Before joining UCLA in 2023, she was the Lenfest Earth Institute Professor of Climate Change at Columbia University, where she also served as the Director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy. She holds several patents and has received numerous professional awards and honors, including the Shell Thomas Baron Award in Fluid-Particle Systems and PSRI Lectureship Award from AIChE PTF and the NSF CAREER Award, among others. She also led key global and national discussions on CCUS, including the Mission Innovation Workshop in 2017. Park is a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), American Chemical Society (ACS), Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She earned a BASc and an MASc in Chemical Engineering from the University of British Columbia in Canada and a PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from The Ohio State University.