Welcome to my website featuring my research interests.
I am currently a Schmidt Science postdoctoral fellow in the Surendranath group at the Chemistry department at MIT. Prior to that, I did my PhD in Chemical Engineering under the tutelage of Prof. Yan Ning at the National University of Singapore. In my research I try to understand how principles of electrocatalysis apply to thermal catalysis and vice versa. Examples are the spontaneous polarization of catalytic interfaces during thermal catalysis as well as the non-Faradaic electrochemical promotion of catalysis. In my PhD, I worked on model single-atom catalysts to study catalytic active sites related to catalysis for environmental catalysis and the valorization of waste resources (such as plastics and biomass). On the long-term I intend to employ structurally defined model catalysts to those fundamental problems in heterogeneous catalysis.
News
June 2022 - Our collaborative paper on structure-activity correlations between a variety of POM-supported single-atom catalysts for the CO oxidation have been published in CCS Chemistry.
February 2022 - MJH joins the Surendranath group at MIT for his postdoctoral fellowship.
Jun 2021 - MJH was announced as one of the 2021 Schmidt Science Fellows and now joins the growing family of senior and junior fellows pushing the boundaries of science solving some of the world's most pressing problems.
May 2021 - Our recently published article on the promotion of hydrogenation catalysts by oscillating electric potentials was highlighted by the NUS News, eurekalert.org, phys.org, etc.
Feb 2021 - MJH was selected as a Schmidt Science Fellowship finalist.
Feb 2021 - Exciting times for dynamic catalysis, our proof-of-concept study on the dynamic non-Faradaic promotion of ethylene hydrogenation catalysts by up to 553% is published in JACS Au.
Jan 2021 - Our first venture into the realm of dynamic catalysis is pulished in Mol. Catal.
Nov 2020 - Our paper on the oxidation mechanism of single-atom catalysts with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry is published in Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.
Mar 2020 - MJH was awarded the Young Scientist Travel Support Price to attend the ICC 2020.
Jan 2020 - MJH's perspective on promotion methods for heterogeneous catalysis is published in Chem. Sci.
Oct 2019 - MJH embarkes on his journey to work in the lab of Javier Pérez-RamÃrez at ETH Zurich for 2 months.
Jul 2019 - The second paper as corresponding author published in J. Catal. - this time on the support-dependent CO2 hydrogenation.
Jan 2019 - MJH's paper on the spectroscopy-guided design of improved CO oxidation single-atom catalysts is published in Nat. Commun.
Aug 2018 - MJH's first paper as corresponding author is published in Green Energy Environ.
Jul 2018 - Adv. Mater. just published our perspective on harnessing colloidal chemistry principles for the stabilization of single-atom catalysts.
Mar 2018 - Our perspective on the valorization of biomass resources for the production of renewable chemicals is published in ACS Sustain. Chem. Eng.
Jan 2017 - MJH starts his PhD in the Green Catalysis Group at NUS-ChBE supported by a SINGA scholarship.
Sep 2016 - MJH finishes his M.Sc. studies and heads out to a short research stint in Yuriy Román's lab at MIT partly supported by a Germany scholarship.