Regular biography
Kumar Varoon Agrawal is Associate Professor and GAZNAT Chair for Advanced Separations at the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. His research focuses on advanced membrane materials and processes for energy-efficient molecular separations, including porous graphene and two-dimensional metal–organic framework membranes. His work addresses applications in carbon capture, hydrogen purification, and resource recovery. By integrating materials science, transport physics, and process engineering, his group aims to bridge the gap between laboratory discovery and industrial implementation. Agrawal leads the Laboratory of Advanced Separations (LAS) and is involved in projects such as Solutions4Sustainability CCUS and NCCR Separations. He also co-founded the spin-off Divea, which commercializes porous graphene membranes for carbon capture and industrial decarbonization.
Scholar-generated biography
Kumar Varoon Agrawal is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Chemical Sciences & Engineering, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. His research focuses on the development of porous 2D films for separation and nanofluidics, with an emphasis on creating advanced materials for gas and water separation. Agrawal's work includes the synthesis of self-pillared zeolite nanosheets, exfoliated zeolite nanosheets for selective membranes, and single-layer graphene membranes for gas mixture separation. His research explores the fabrication of high-performance membranes using techniques such as electrophoretic nuclei assembly and Langmuir–Schaefer deposition. Agrawal's contributions span the design of nanoscale pores for gas-sieving and the enhancement of membrane permeance for carbon capture.