Dr Qilei Song

Dr Qilei Song is a Lecturer in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Imperial College London. Dr Song received Bachelor's degree in School of Energy and Environment at Southeast University (Nanjing) in 2006. Afterwards, he stayed working with Prof. Rui Xiao on clean energy, catalysis, and combustion technology, and obtained Master’s degree in Energy & Environmental Engineering in 2009. In October 2009, he joined the Combustion Group led by Prof. John Dennis in the Department of Chemical Engineering at University of Cambridge as a postgraduate student working on nanostructured materials for energy applications. In October 2010, he moved to the Cavendish Laboratory and completed a PhD in Physics working on microporous polymer membranes with Dr. Easan Sivaniah, and in collaboration with Prof. Eugene Terentjev at the Cavendish Laboratory and Prof. Anthony K. Cheetham FRS in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy. He passed his PhD viva in February 2014, and continued as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Cavendish Laboratory. 

He joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London in November 2014 to pursue an independent research programme as an Imperial College Junior Research Fellow, and in collaboration with Prof. Andrew Livingston FREng. Dr Qilei Song was appointed a Lecturer in the Department of Chemical Engineering in August 2016. He is one of the principal investigators at the Barrer Centre, a new research centre recently launched at Imperial College performing world leading research in separation materials and membrane technology. He is a visiting researcher in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy at Cambridge University, and a visiting researcher at Southeast University (Nanjing, China). 

His current research interests are focused on molecular design of functional porous materials and membranes for energy, environment, and sustainability. He has authored and co-authored about 30 papers in peer-reviewed journals, including Nature Materials, Nature Energy, Nature Communications, Advanced Materials, Angewandte Chemie, and Energy and Environmental Science. 

Dewang Zeng

Dewang Zeng is a PhD student at Southeast University (Nanjing, China) supervised by Prof. Rui Xiao and Dr Qilei Song. His PhD research project is on design, synthesis, and characterisation of layered double hydroxides (LDHs) and derived nanostructured mixed metal oxides for applications in catalysis and chemical looping redox cycle processes for H2 production and CO2 capture and conversion. 

Qiao Zhang

Qiao Zhang is currently a visiting student in the Group. Qiao did MSc research in the department under the supervision of Dr. Qilei Song and Prof. Andrew Livingston. She is now studying selective water and ion transport in Polymer Membranes of Intrinsic Microporosity (PIMs) and functional applications for water purification, desalination, and membrane separators in batteries.

Qiao received Bachelor's degree in Molecular Science and Engineering at Nankai University (China), and joined Imperial College London as Msc student since Oct 2015.

BIOGRAPHY

• 2015 – 2016 MSc in Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London, United Kingdom
• 2013 – 2015 BEng in Chemical Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
• 2011 – 2013 BSc in Chemistry (Molecular Science and Engineering), Nankai University, Tianjin, China

Barbara Primera Darwich

Barbara is currently an MSc student in Advanced Chemical Engineering (Structured Product Engineering) at Imperial College. She completed dual undergraduate program: Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering and Minor in Materials Science and Engineering from Columbia University, New York, United States (2016). Bachelor of Arts in Pre-Engineering from Rollins College, Florida, United States with a concentration in Chemistry (2016). Her research experience during undergraduate studies involved developing soft materials for renewable energy applications (Columbia University, USA) and organic chemistry synthesis (Jacobs University Bremen, Germany) and internships on research and development of polymeric encapsulation for agricultural applications (BASF, Germany) as well as surface engineering research (SCHOTT AG, Germany).

Her MSc research project is on design and applications of nanostructured battery materials for energy conversion and storage, under the supervision of Dr. Qilei Song.

Anqi Wang

Mr Anqi Wang is an MSc student in Advanced Chemical Engineering (ACE) in Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering and Technology at Zhejiang University (Hangzhou, China) in 2016, and joined Imperial College London in October 2016. 

His research interests are focused on polymer synthesis and characterisation. He is currently doing an MSc research project under the supervision of Dr. Qilei Song. The project is on design and synthesis of microporous organic polymers including polymers of intrinsic microporosity (PIMs).

Tianhe Zhang

Tianhe ZHANG is currently an MSc student in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London. Tianhe received her Bachelo's Degree in Chemical Engineering at both University of Nottingham, United Kingdom and University of Nottingham Ningbo China with First degree in Jul 2016. 

Tianhe studied the electrolytes of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) at the University of Nottingham and now she is doing MSc research under supervision of Dr. Qilei Song and Prof. Andrew G. Livingston. She is currently focusing on design and fabrication of microporous polymer membranes and applications in molecular separations.

Rongtan Gao

Rongtan Gao is a MSc student at Peking University, Shenzhen Graduate School. Rongtan received his BSc in Chemistry at the College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering at Peking University in 2015.  His MSc research project is on all-solid-state Li-ion batteries for energy storage, in the group of Prof. Feng Pan in the School of Advanced Materials, Peking University. Rongtan is now visiting our group working on a collaborative project on functional materials and advanced batteries for energy storage applications.