Our researchers focus on projects across the highly-interdisciplinary topic of bioenergy and producing energy from waste. With expertise from across the engineering, sciences and social sciences, this group brings expertise in bioenergy and continuous manufacturing of biofuels, plastic recycling, biomass conversion, biodegradable polymers, chemical and biological recycling of plastics, waste utilization and upcycling, lifecycle assessment and techno-economic analyses of organic waste treatment technologies. We apply engineering and decision-making models to find solutions to climate change and environmental problems, energy and process modeling, multi-objective optimization, sustainability, system modeling and optimization for energy resilience. The group also works on bioprocess and bioreaction modeling, applications of AI (Artificial Intelligence) in bioprocesses, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) of bioreactors, biodegradation and bioconversion of plastic wastes, enzymatic degradation of PET plastics and the design of new enzymatic reaction systems.

  • The goal of the Biomanufacturing Science and Engineering Lab (BioSEL) is to build biomanufacturing platforms for sustainable production of a series of high-value products from renewable and economical feedstocks. Advanced science and engineering tools including synthetic biology, fermentation engineering, bioprocess integration and intensification, and bioprocess modeling, optimization, and control strategies will be used to achieve our goal.
  • The Sustainability and Reaction Engineering Laboratory (SuREL) at the University of Massachusetts Lowell focuses on utilizing both experimental and theoretical techniques to study modern energy and environmental problems. Key research expertise of our laboratory includes high temperature pyrolysis, gasification, and oxidation experiments and molecular and detailed kinetic modeling.
  • The Plastics & Environment Research Laboratory (PERL) focuses on the following research areas: Chemical and biological recycling of plastics; Plastic degradation; Renewable fuels, plastics and additives synthesis; Safe/green solvent formulations; Microplastic transport and fate; Lifecycle assessment and techno-economic analyses of organic waste treatment technologies.
  • The Energy & Combustion Research Laboratory (ECRL) at the University of Massachusetts Lowell is focused on developing solutions to the energy problems facing our world. Under the direction of Prof. John Hunter Mack, they are exploring a variety of topics ranging from alternative fuels, novel thermodynamic cycles, and combustion-assisted material synthesis.
  • In the Re-Engineered Energy Laboratory (REng|Lab) led by Juan Pablo Trelles researchers re-engineer the use of direct use of renewable energy towards sustainable processes. A special focus of the REng|Lab is the utilization of solar radiation and renewable electricity for chemical synthesis.
  • At the BUREK Lab (Building Resilience through Knowledge) led by Jasmina Burek, Ph.D., students work on interdisciplinary projects and apply engineering, life cycle assessment (LCA), and decision-making models to find solutions to climate change and environmental problems.

  • Amir Ameli - plastics recycling, bioplastics, valorization of textile waste
  • Jasmina Burek - waste biomass, process modeling, techno-economic analysis, lifecycle assessment
  • Wan-Ting (Grace) Chen - plastics recycling, bioplastics, microplastics, safer solvent design, biomass conversion
  • Tingshu Hu - harvesting energy from tiboelectricity with nanogenerators, power management of nanogenerators
  • Jayant Kumar - fuels from biomass and waste materials in food industry
  • Hunter Mack - biofuels, waste-to-fuels, alternative fuels, syngas, biogas
  • Margaret Sobkowicz-Kline - renewable polymers, plastics processing & recycling, nanocomposites, organic photovoltaics and electronics, green chemistry, biomaterials
  • Joel Tickner - sustainable biopolymers
  • Juan Pablo Trelles - sustainable chemical synthesis, plasma science and engineering, computational fluid dynamics, computational modeling, finite element methods, hybrid fluid-particle methods, variational multiscale methods, nonequilibrium phenomena
  • Noah Van Dam - computational modeling, biomass conversion, multiphase flow modeling, combustion
  • Hsi-Wu Wong - waste utilization and upcycling, sustainable processes
  • Dongming Xie - biofuels, biorecycling of plastic wastes, bioplastics, biomanufacturing
  • Weile Yan - water for energy production; mineral recovery from end-of-life Li batteries; chemical and water footprints of renewable energy
  • Jackie Zhang - biogas, energy harvest from wastewater