Manish Kumar

Associate Professor, Environmental Engineering & Chemical Engineering
University of Texas, Austin

What can we learn from nature about designing membranes?

October 10th

4:00–5:00 p.m.
Physics/Astronomy Auditorium A114

Abstract

Membranes are rapidly becoming the fastest growing platform for water purification, wastewater reuse, and desalination. They are also emerging in importance for carbon capture, hydrocarbon separations, and are being considered for applications involving catalysis and sensing. All synthetic membranes have selectivity-permeability tradeoffs, i.e if a membrane has high permeability, it will have a lower selectivity between two solutes or between a dissolved solute and a solvent. This is due to the mechanism of solution-diffusion through a wide distribution of free volume elements in non-porous membranes such as reverse osmosis membranes used for desalination and reuse, and a wide pore size distribution in porous membranes.

A simple solution, in concept, to such a challenge is to do what nature does – design precise angstrom to micron scale pores with no polydispersity. However, so far such an ideal has not been realized in synthetic membranes and in particular for angstrom scale separations. We will discuss bioinspired ideas, and its realization in our lab, that could lead to an achievement of such an ideal membrane based on biological protein channels and artificial channels that mimic their structure.

Bio

Manish Kumar is an associate professor of environmental engineering and chemical engineering at the University of Texas, Austin. He received his bachelor’s degree from the National Institute of Technology in Trichy, India in chemical engineering. Dr. Kumar completed his master’s in environmental engineering at the University of Illinois and then worked for approximately seven years in the environmental consulting industry on applied research projects. These research projects were primarily centered around membranes for water treatment, desalination, and reclamation. 

He would later return to Illinois to complete a PhD in the area of biomimetic membranes. Afterward, Dr. Kumar would attend Harvard Medical School to conduct postdoctoral research on the structure of water channel proteins, also known as “aquaporins.” He now works in the areas of biophysical transport characterization, membrane protein structures, and protein-based membranes and devices. Dr. Kumar also works on developing artificial membrane proteins (based on synthetic supramolecular macrocycles) for ion-ion separations for rare earth element recovery. His research group is also using advanced electron microscopy to improve methods that characterize artificial membranes and to create plant-based filtration materials.