Mark Ormerod

Biography

I was appointed as a Lecturer in Physical and Inorganic Chemistry at Keele in 1992, having previously held the Oppenheimer Research Fellowship and a College Research Fellowship at Cambridge University for three years. In 1997 I was awarded a five year EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship and was promoted to Professor. I was appointed Head of the newly formed School of Physical and Geographical Sciences in August 2005. I obtained my first degree in Natural Sciences (specialising in Chemistry in the final year) from Cambridge University in 1986, and my PhD from the same institution in 1989, in the area of surface chemistry and heterogeneous catalysis.

Research and scholarship

My research is in the area of environmental sustainability, focusing on sustainable technology and environmental catalysis, with particular interests in solid oxide fuel cells and environmental catalysis, including hydrocarbon and biogas conversion, pollution abatement and utilisation of waste biomass. This research includes the development of novel and more tolerant catalytic materials and studies of surface mechanisms and reaction pathways, catalyst deactivation and poisoning and tolerance to impurities, combining a wide range of spectroscopic and analytical techniques with temperature programmed reaction and conventional catalytic performance measurements to establish structure-activity relationships with the aim of gaining increased insight and understanding of surface processes, molecular mechanisms and deactivation processes, and in turn inform the design of new, improved materials.

The same approach of combining spectroscopic and analytical measurements with activity data is also extensively applied to a wide range of other solid materials and problems in environmental chemistry. My research has received substantial funding from the national research councils, government departments, the European Union and from industry.

Another strand to my research, which is increasingly developing, is in the area of environmental citizenship.

Teaching

CHE-30043 Materials Chemistry and Catalysis