Professor Alexander Cowan MSci, PhD, FHEA

Personal Statement

Prof Alex Cowan obtained his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Nottingham (2007) for the study of inorganic reaction mechanisms with transient spectroscopy, under the supervision of Prof. Mike George. Following a postdoctoral position at Nottingham developing catalysts for the reduction of carbon dioxide he moved to Imperial College London to study photoelectrochemical water splitting with Prof. David Klug.

In 2011 Alex was appointed to a Lectureship in Renewable Fuel Synthesis at Imperial College on the Artificial Leaf programme. In October 2012 he joined the department of Chemistry and the Stephenson Institute for Renewable Energy at Liverpool University initially as a Lecturer and he was subsequently promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2015, Reader in 2017 and Professor in 2019. In 2012 Alex was awarded a prestigious 5-year EPSRC early career fellowship and in 2017 he was awarded a further EPSRC fellowship that will run from 2017-2021.

Alex leads an active research group that develops and studies catalysts for the sustainable production of fuels. Recent work has focused on the chemistry of carbon dioxide utilisation with programmes exploring how solar energy can be used to drive the production of useful fuels from only carbon dioxide and water and on the development of electrocatalysts for green hydrogen production. Alex is the current chair of the UK Solar Fuels Network and details of how to get involved in solar fuels science are here. Full details of our research activities can be found here.

Funded Fellowships