Clarkson Professor Simona Liguori Named Executive Editor of Leading Chemical Engineering Journal

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Clarkson University Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Simona Liguori has been appointed executive editor of the Chemical Engineering Journal (CEJ), effective July 1. The appointment reflects both her scientific excellence and her commitment to advancing high-impact research in chemical engineering.

Published by Elsevier, the Chemical Engineering Journal is one of the world's leading publications in chemical engineering. As executive editor, Liguori will help shape the journal's publication of innovative research spanning energy, environmental technologies, and materials science while advancing solutions to some of the world's most pressing sustainability challenges.

Liguori, who is also a faculty affiliate with Clarkson's Institute for a Sustainable Environment, is an internationally recognized researcher whose work focuses on inorganic membranes and membrane reactors, gas separation, nonequilibrium reactions and negative-emission technologies. Her research explores new approaches to gas separation and catalytic reactions that overcome traditional limitations while addressing critical environmental and energy challenges.

A cornerstone of her work is the development of the Innovative System Membrane Advanced ReacTor, or i-SMART, an advanced membrane reactor that integrates catalysis and separation to intensify chemical processes and enable cleaner energy conversion under milder operating conditions. Using materials such as metals, alloys, nanoparticles, ceramics, nitrides, and carbides, her research aims to advance sustainable technologies for energy production and emissions reduction.

Her current research includes developing palladium-based membrane reactors for blue hydrogen production through biofuel reforming, synthesizing molten salt membranes for ammonia separation, and designing highly intensified processes for ammonia synthesis.

Liguori joined Clarkson after an accomplished international research career. She earned both her master's and doctoral degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Calabria in Italy before conducting postdoctoral research at the Institute on Membrane Technology (ITM-CNR), Italy's National Research Council. She later joined Stanford University as a Physical Science Research Associate before serving as a Research Assistant Professor at the Colorado School of Mines and as a faculty member at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Liguori received Worcester Polytechnic Institute's Women's Young Investigator Fellowship and Carbon Footprint Challenge Award and was named a 2020 Scialog Fellow for Negative Emissions Science. In 2025, she was awarded the Tau Beta Pi Faculty Award. She has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications and holds two U.S. patents.