Dr. Abhishek Roy is a scientist, innovator & science policy advocator with deep expertise in applying polymer and separation science fundamentals to address society's critical and pressing sustainability- driven challenges. He had spent over 18 years in academic and industrial separation science research (Dow) in water purification, fuel cell membranes, petrochemical separations, and carbon capture. Currently he is a strategic hire at NREL to shape separation science program for industrial decarbonization, water purification and recovering critical minerals from unconventional sources. Before joining NREL, he was the technical lead for chemical decarbonization effort at Dow and drove several programs around carbon capture and chemical process separation. He is one of the co-inventors of next generation carbon molecular sieve membranes for reducing energy consumption of chemical separation processes.
He spent close to 10 years in water purification industry (Dow Water Process Solutions) where he contributed towards inventing and commercializing a significant portion of today’s commercial reverse osmosis membranes. He was awarded one of the highest recognitions from the Society of Chemical Industry's (Gordon E Moore Medal, 2016) and the presidential Dow sustainability innovator award for developing new generation of membranes that lowered the energy consumption of brackish water desalination by 30 %. He is a co-inventor of more than 150 global patents and applications and has published 40 peer-reviewed articles, including a cover page in Science and a special feature in PNAS. He was recognized by the National Academy of Science, Medicine, and Engineering as one of the top 18 outstanding young professionals and inducted into the New Voices program (2018) to drive meaningful dialogues on how science, engineering, and medicine are shaping the global future. He is currently one of the Board of Directors for North American Membrane Society.