Dr Camille Petit

Winner: 2020 Barrer Award

Imperial College London

For innovative work on porous nanostructures for applications in the energy and sustainability sectors.

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At secondary school, our teacher performed the ‘Silver Tree’ experiment to illustrate redox reactions. I thought it was like art. Fascinating.
Dr Camille Petit

Dr Camille Petit’s group works on developing porous materials for energy and environmental applications. These materials can act as filters for pollutants, including greenhouse gases. They can also help convert CO2 or other compounds into valuable fuels and chemicals using sunlight, a renewable form of energy.

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Dr Camille Petit is a Reader in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London, which she joined in September 2013. She currently leads the Multifunctional Materials Laboratory. Prior to this appointment, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University. She received her PhD in Chemistry in 2011 from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and her MSc in 2007 from Ecole Nationale Superieure de Chimie de Montpellier, France. 

Her research focuses on elucidating the fundamentals of porous materials formation, structure, and chemistry to exploit them in interfacial applications, i.e. separation of molecules and solar fuel production. Her work also investigates the implications of using these materials on a larger scale. Materials of interest include metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) and nitride-based materials. Dr Petit has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles, she has one granted patent and has filed two others, all related to the development of sorbent materials.

Dr Petit is the recipient of a 2019 ERC Starting Grant, the 2017 AIChE’s 35 under 35 award, the 2017 ExxonMobil European Science & Engineering Program Award, the 2017 IOM3 Silver Medal and the 2015 IChemE Sir Frederick Warner medal.

Q+A

How did you first become interested in chemistry?

At secondary school our teacher performed the ‘Silver Tree’ experiment to illustrate redox reactions. I thought it was like art. Fascinating.

Who or what has inspired you?

My PhD and postdoc advisors, Professor Teresa Bandosz and Professor Alissa Park, have been immense sources of inspiration for me and still are today. They have an infectious passion for their field of research, a genuine dedication to their team and they are always very generous with their time.

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