Jonah Williams joined the Columbia University EAEE M.S./Ph.D. program after graduating from Rutgers University (New Brunswick, N.J.) with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and working the chemical technology company, Lummus Technology (Bloomfield, N.J.). His background and experience includes the design and modeling of conventional chemical process technologies, including power generation, petrochemicals, gasification, and biomass-based energy. While at Rutgers, he worked with Prof. Charles Dismukes on improving and categorizing algal-based biofuel candidates through genetic engineering and improving photosynthetic electron flow. Within the Park Group at Columbia, his research interests are broadly in the realm of upcycling of built environment wastes to novel materials through carbon mineralization pathways (CCUS). He studies both aqueous leaching and alkaline thermal processes to convert biomass and alkaline wastes into new filler materials, such as carbonates and Si-geopolymers. Additionally, he is interested in process modeling in the context of the deployment of new CCUS technologies, especially at the interface of bench-top empirical work and the scalability of such systems.
His work at Columbia is funded by the New York State Energy Research Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy.