Assistant Professor and Jack R. and Carol A. Johnson Faculty Fellow in Chemical and Biological Engineering Luke Roling has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for his project, “Engineering Active Site Structure for Selective Nitrogen Catalysis.”

CAREER awards are the NSF’s most prestigious awards given to early-career faculty. Roling will receive $573,547 beginning May 1, 2025 to execute his work over a five-year period.

Computational modeling to tackle pollution issues

Roling’s project aims to address the issue of nitrate pollution from industrial wastewater and agricultural runoff, a significant issue facing Iowa’s waterways. His team will use computational modeling to design new electrocatalysts to convert nitrate to inert nitrogen gas or ammonia, seeking to understand how catalysts can be engineered to control the reactivity of nitrogen.

Roling looks to understand the atomic-scale details of how catalyst structure and composition affect the reaction mechanism, and in turn how the reaction causes the catalyst structure to evolve over time. If successful, this project will enable efficient wastewater treatment using renewable electricity, while simultaneously recycling nitrogen for reuse as ammonia fertilizer.

The project’s research will be integrated with an education and outreach plan that will drive excitement for computationally-driven materials design in rural communities as well as in undergraduate chemical engineering coursework.

Roling holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and B.S. degrees in chemical engineering and mathematics from Iowa State University. His research interests include the application of computational chemistry toolkits to a broad range of problems in sustainable chemical transformations and materials design, including biomass valorization, environmental catalysis, and next-generation optical materials.