Chemistry Undergraduates Help Fuel Innovative Energy Research

Paul Lauridsen is a year away from earning his bachelor’s degree, but the chemistry major is already working on the front lines of USC efforts to turn greenhouse gas into methanol fuel.

Lauridsen ‘18 spends 10 or more hours a week conducting research on transition metal catalysis in an organometallics lab. He considers this experience crucial to feeding his passion for chemistry and guiding his plans to attend graduate school.

“Sometimes the class is very theoretical,” Lauridsen said. “This is very hands on, real-world experience.” The work underway in the USC Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute is also helping solve one of the world’s biggest challenges — the clean generation and storage of renewable energy.

Lauridsen is one of the several undergraduates performing research under the mentorship of Travis J Williams, associate professor of chemistry.

So far, the group has identified certain complexes and shown that they can convert harmful carbon dioxide to formic acid and vice versa, an intermediate step to producing methanol. Development of these complexes is enabling new options, bringing total conversion to the clean-burning fuel closer to reality.

“We have a couple of undergrads who behave like graduate students and postdocs,” said Williams, who has enthusiastically mentored 15 undergraduate researchers since 2007. He also spurs them to attend scientific conferences and seminars and participate in writing scientific papers.

“External experience is important and learning how to communicate science is critical,” he said.

Chemical engineering major Elyse Kedzie has worked five to 10 hours a week in the Williams lab since 2015. Early on, Kedzie did online research to learn more about what USC professors were studying and investigating with applications to her interest in developing sustainable energy technology.

“I saw that Williams does a lot of energy storage reaction chemistry, which is something I wanted to study, so it was a perfect fit,” said the senior, who graduates this spring.