Executive Committee

Our Officers (2024)

Lynn Katz, Chair

Dr Katz received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and has been a faculty member at the University of Texas (UT) since 1998. Dr Katz has over twenty-five years of interdisciplinary research experience examining reaction phenomena at interfaces and evaluating the impact of these processes on the fate and transport of organic and inorganic contaminants in the environment. Her research has involved both fundamental and applied studies funded by DOE, NSF, EPA, USDA and has included the utilization of macroscopic and spectroscopic data to refine mathematical models for predicting contaminant fate and transport. She has successfully developed collaborations with faculty across numerous disciplines including geological sciences, environmental engineering, chemistry and petroleum engineering. She has organized symposia for ACS conferences and served as program and division chair for the Geochemistry Division, Associate Editor for the Journal of Environmental Management and Chair of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors Foundation. More recently, she co-led the resource extraction roadmapping effort for the Department of Energy’s Hub, the National Allicance for Water Innovation, and serves as co-chair of the UT Gender Equity Task Force. She is interested in expanding the division’s efforts to diversify the membership, develop mentorship opportunities, provide programming that addresses current grand challenges and contributes to the division’s strategic planning.

Eric Pierce, Immediate Past Chair

Dr. Eric M. Pierce is director of Environmental Sciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). He received his Ph.D. in Environmental Science with emphasis in low-temperature geochemistry from Tulane University in 2002. His research focuses on low-temperature environmental geochemistry with emphasis in solid-fluid interactions. Specific interests are fundamental and applied issues related to the weathering of soil minerals/glass and the biogeochemical transformation of metals and radionuclides in terrestrial ecosystems.

Sang Soo Lee, Program Chair

Dr. Lee received his BS and MS in Geosciences and Earth System Sciences from Seoul National University and PhD in Earth and Environmental Sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2007. His research focuses on molecular-scale understanding of geochemical processes at various mineral–fluid interfaces, including ion adsorption and desorption, crystal growth and dissolution, and mineral–organic interactions, through in situ and real-time observations using synchrotron-based X-ray scattering and spectroscopic techniques and scanning probe microscopies. He has been an ACS member since 2010, organized multiple symposia, and has served as selection committee for the ACS Geochemist Medal, the Student Travel Awards, and the Best Presentation Awards. For the Geochemistry Division, he has served as the Membership Chair (2015–2017) and the Secretary (2018–2020). Along with his activity with ACS GEOC, Sang Soo served as a proposal review committee for Advanced Photon Source (2014–2019; as the Chair of the Chem/Biol/Environmental Scattering panel, 2017–2019) and as the Clay Minerals Society Council and Council Nomination Committee.

Ian C. Bourg, Program Chair Elect

lan Bourg is an Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University. His group studies the properties of water at interfaces, with a particular emphasis on the impact of clay minerals on subsurface hydrology, soil mechanics, carbon dynamics, geochemistry, and contaminant fate and transport. He obtained a B.Eng. in Industrial Process Engineering from the National Institute for Applied Sciences in Toulouse in 1999 and a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 2004. He led a research group in the Earth Sciences Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory until 2014 before joining the faculty at Princeton University in 2015.

Qingyun Li, Secretary

Qingyun Li is an assistant professor in geochemistry at Stony Brook University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental sciences and PhD in Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering. She utilizes mostly experimental approaches but also modeling tools to study geochemistry reactions in energy and environmental systems from the perspectives of thermodynamics and kinetics. Related systems include but are not limited to geologic carbon sequestration, underground hydrogen storage, and mineral nucleation and precipitation at water-rock interfaces. Qingyun has been a member of the ACS Geochemistry Division since 2013 and was the Division Membership Coordinator from 2020 to 2023.

Yuanzhi Tang, Treasurer

Yuanzhi Tang is an Associate Professor of geochemistry at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech. A graduate of SUNY-Stony Brook in 2008, she worked as a Postdoc Fellow and Research Associate at Harvard University before joining Georgia Tech at the end of 2012. Dr. Tang has been a member of ACS and the Geochemistry Division since she was a graduate student. She has organized many symposia for the Division over the years and served as the Division Program Chair Elect (2019) and Program Chair (2020). Her highly interdisciplinary research focuses on the molecular scale kinetics and mechanisms of chemical reactions at mineral-water interface, and has broad implications for a range of fields in environmental engineering, oceanography, planetary science, and materials science. She currently serves as the Division Chair. Yuanzhi is enthusiastic about promoting geochemistry in the broader chemistry community, culturing and recognizing early career researchers, and ensuring the close cooperation with other divisions of the American Chemical Society.

Anastasia Ilgen, Councilor

Anastasia is an experimental geochemist with 15+ years of research experience, specializing in molecular mechanisms of chemical reactions at solid-water interfaces, including ion adsorption, chemically-assisted fracturing, and surface-mediated redox reactions. Her notable discoveries include identifying chemical complexation reactions which control fracturing in crystalline phases, with implications for geological carbon and nuclear waste storage, and other instances of geological reservoir use. Her innovative work on silica nanopores led to new insights into the nanoconfinement-driven chemical changes to the structure and thermodynamics of surface complexation reactions for copper and lanthanide ions. Nanoconfined surfaces are pervasive in the environment and in engineered systems, and this research will lead to more accurate chemical fate and transport models, and to new approaches to the separation of rare earth elements.

Anastasia Ilgen received an equivalent of M.S. degree in water quality and engineering from Kamchatka State Technical University, Russia in 2001. She worked at the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, Kamchatka, Russia (2001-2004), investigating the effects of volcanic eruptions on snow chemistry, the remediation for gold mining sites, and she was part of a team that utilized remote sensing for volcano monitoring. While working on her Ph.D. in Environmental Chemistry (University of Alaska Fairbank, AK, 2010) she investigated redox chemistry at the clay mineral-water interfaces, specifically within the context of natural geothermal systems. She joined Sandia as research staff in 2012.

Sebastien Kerisit, Alternate Councilor

Sebastien Kerisit received his PhD in computational chemistry from the University of Bath and is now a Senior Research Scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Lab. His research interests cover a wide range of topics relevant to the geochemistry community including the chemistry of mineral-water interfaces, carbon capture and sequestration, the aqueous corrosion of glasses, the mechanisms of mineral nucleation and growth, and the redox properties of natural systems. He has been a member of Geochemistry Division since 2006, and served a four-year rotation as Program Chair- Elect (2013), Program Chair (2014), Division Chair (2015), Past Division Chair (2016), and Treasurer (2017-2019) of Division. Most recently, Sebastien served as Chair of the Geochemistry Division Medal Committee.

Ian C. Bourg, Awards Committee Chair

lan Bourg is an Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University. His group studies the properties of water at interfaces, with a particular emphasis on the impact of clay minerals on subsurface hydrology, soil mechanics, carbon dynamics, geochemistry, and contaminant fate and transport. He obtained a B.Eng. in Industrial Process Engineering from the National Institute for Applied Sciences in Toulouse in 1999 and a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 2004. He led a research group in the Earth Sciences Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory until 2014 before joining the faculty at Princeton University in 2015.

Andrew Freiburger, Webmaster

Andrew is a Computational Scientist in the Computing, Environment, and Life Sciences Division of Argonne National Laboratory. He earned an Associate’s of Science from Grand Rapids Community College (2016), a Bachelor’s degree from Grand Valley State University in west Michigan (2019) – with a Chemistry major, a Biology minor, and a Green Chemistry Certificate – and a Master’s of Applied Science degree from the University of Victoria in British Columbia (2022) – with a major in Civil Engineering. He received the GEOC student travel award for his Master’s research in 2021. His current research explores the chemical complexity of biological cells, and how these systems influence natural biogeochemical cycles.

Rui Cai, Webmaster

Rui Cai is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology. She obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Ocean University of China (2019) and pursued further studies, earning a Master’s degree in Environmental Science from Nanjing University (2023). During her Master’s studies, she primarily combined 14C labeling tracing techniques with molecular dynamics simulation to explore the mechanisms of microplastic adsorption of organic pollutions. Rui has always been fascinated by molecular-scale solid-liquid interfacial chemical reactions. After joining Dr. Yuanzhi Tang’s research group, she will utilize synchrotron radiation techniques to study the formation of photocatalytic manganese oxides.

Ke Yuan, Membership Coordinator

Ke Yuan is an R&D Research Associate in the Geochemistry and Interfacial Sciences Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Since completing his Ph.D. in Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan in 2015, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Argonne National Laboratory before joining ORNL in 2019. He uses synchrotron-based X-ray scattering and molecular dynamics simulations to reveal mechanisms at mineral-water interfaces relevant to the sequestration of heavy metals, subsurface energy utilization, and direct air capture of CO2.

Yinghao Wen, Newsletter Editor

Yinghao Wen is a postdoc fellow in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Science at Georgia Institute of Technology. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Master’s degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Northwestern University, and a Ph.D. degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Texas A&M University. His Ph.D. research focused on the degradation of organic pollutants using advanced oxidation and reduction processes. He is currently working on recovery of rare-earth elements (REE) from secondary feedstocks, including incineration byproducts and mine tailings, via green chemistry. He is also actively learning synchrotron X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) to help him understand the mineralogy and speciation of REE in different feedstocks.