Karthish Manthiram is the Bren Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, and the Exeuctive Officer for Chemical Engineering at Caltech. The Manthiram Lab is focused on the development of electrified catalysts for the sustainable synthesis of molecules that go into constructing the physical world, including plastics and fertilizers, using renewable feedstocks. Karthish received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University in 2010 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley in 2015 with Prof. Paul Alivisatos. After a one-year postdoc at the California Institute of Technology with Prof. Robert H. Grubbs, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an Assistant Professor in 2017. In 2021, he moved to Caltech as a Full Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry. In 2022, he was named the Director of the Solar Science and Catalysis Center in the Resnick Sustainability Institute. In 2025, he was named the Bren Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry and started as Chair for Chemical Engineering.

Karthish's research and teaching has been recognized with several awards, including the Moore Inventor Fellowship, DOE Early Career Award, NSF CAREER Award, Sloan Research Fellowship, Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science, Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, Infosys Prize, MIT Chemical Engineering Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, and MIT Teaching with Digital Technology Award. It is our pleasure to welcome Prof. Manthiram to PodCAT!