Keith ’01 Named Inaugural Mellon Faculty Fellow

The University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering recently appointed John Keith ’01 as assistant professor and the inaugural R.K. Mellon Faculty Fellow.

With funding from a 2012 Richard King Mellon Foundation grant, the university’s Center for Energy brought in Keith as part of a program to build an interdisciplinary foundation toward energy research, focusing on functional materials for energy applications.

Keith’s research will focus on developing and applying computational methods to enhance processes that convert CO2 and water into useful chemicals and fuels. By collaborating with experimentalists, Keith aims to contribute to finding economically feasible routes for energy solutions, which will contribute to the center’s ongoing efforts to improve energy technology and sustainability.

Before joining the Swanson School, Keith worked as an associate research scholar in Princeton University’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He earned his B.A. in chemistry with high honors from Wesleyan, where he was first introduced to theoretical chemistry by George Petersson, Professor of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry and Fisk Professor of Natural Science.

The Swanson School of Engineering is one of the oldest engineering programs in the United States and has approximately 120 faculty members and more than 3,200 undergraduate and graduate students.