Shu Hu

Shu Hu is an assistant professor of Chemical & Environmental Engineering at Yale University, and is also affiliated with the Energy Sciences Institute at Yale West Campus. He is known for light-driven catalysis in applications to engineered reaction environments. His lab pioneered an entirely new class of coated photocatalysts, addressing the stability, efficiency, and cost of photocatalysis. It enables photocatalysts to be deployed for efficient solar energy utilization at scale.

His group published numerous papers in Science, Nature family journals, and Cell press, in areas of green H2 production, CO2, and CH4 capture and conversion. For these works, he was invited to NAS and had made expert contributions to the 2024 National Academics of Science, Engineering and Medicine Report: A Research Agenda Towards Atmospheric Methane Removal. He was invited to the ACS Presidential Event to discuss methane removal technology.

His Ph.D. training is in Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University, co-advised by materials scientist Prof. Paul McIntyre and physical chemist Prof. Christopher E. D. Chidsey, working on nanoscale semiconductor crystal growth and dielectric coatings. Then, I took on a hybrid optics and physical chemistry direction at the DOE Solar Fuels Hub, jointly advised by applied physicist Harry Atwater and physical chemist Prof. Nate Lewis.

His group combines materials design, advanced in situ characterizations, and modeling to solve complex chemical, materials, and energy problems using light-driven systems.

For these important contributions, I received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Department of Energy Early Career Award, Young Innovator Award of Nano Research, ACS Emerging Researcher Award, TMS Ross Tucker Award of Electronic Materials, ECS Energy Division Young Investigator Award, Scialog Negative Emission Science Award, International Association of Advanced Materials Fellow, and Future Chemical Engineering Scholar.

October 2024