Kunlei Liu is professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Institute for Decarbonization and Energy Advancement at the University of Kentucky. He has over 30 years’ experience in directing research projects in the areas of combustion, gasification, and emissions control. Since 2006, as principal investigator, he has received more than $100M from US DOE, the State of Kentucky, LG&E and KU and an industrial consortium to develop a robust and cost-effective technology for pollution control, water treatment, dispatchable intermittent renewable energy and their performance characterization, material recovery from end-of-life batteries and solar panels, CO2 capture and utilization from power generation processes, industrial sectors and air that covers advanced catalytic solvent development and evaluation, process integration, membrane-based solvent enrichment, chemical looping combustion/gasification, and metal behavior in the post-combustion carbon capture system. His research interests include fossil fuel combustion and gasification, emission control, carbon capture from point sources and air, biomass utilization for fuels and chemicals, hydrogen production, process intensification and optimization, AI for performance monitoring and improvement, and metals recovery from end-of-life Lithium batteries and solar panels. Dr. Liu received his Bachelor of Engineering degree (1988) and his PhD (1993) in Thermoenergy engineering from Southeast University, Nanjing, China. Prior to the University of Kentucky, he has been employed by Southeast University, Western Kentucky University, Environmental Systems Corporation (ESC), and Babcock & Wilcox. He is a fellow of National Acadmey of Inventor.