Michael Shoham Patrascu

Michael joined the faculty of Chemical Engineering at the Technion, Israel, as an Assistant Professor in 2020. Michael’s group research efforts are dedicated to rigorous design of intensified processes by understanding the key fundamental phenomena through both modelling and experimentation techniques.

Michael holds a BSc (Summa cum Laude) and a PhD in Chemical Engineering, both from the Technion.

In his PhD work Michael focused on research and development of intensified scaled-down hydrogen production processes using palladium membrane reactors, through modeling, simulation and experimental tools. Michael’s PhD thesis, entitled “Scaled-down Hydrogen Production in Pd Membrane Reactors: Process Design and Experimental Investigations”, has received the EFCE Excellence Award in Process Intensification (2017) and the EFCE best poster award in a special competition on “Intensified Technologies for Multiphase Processes” (9th ECCE, den Hague, 2013).

EFCE process intensification excellence award presentation to Michael

After completing his PhD in 2015, Michael joined MIT as a postdoctoral scholar working with Prof. Paul Barton in the PSEL group, where he contributed to the field of Continuous Manufacturing of Pharmaceuticals. The focus of the work was to apply novel non-smooth mathematical modeling approach to optimize the (dynamic) operation of an end-to-end continuous manufacturing plant.

Before joining the Technion, Michael had spent three years at the ExxonMobil R&D center in NJ, USA, as a member of the Process Technology Development department. While there he led various research activities aiming at commercializing process intensification concepts and technologies. Specifically, his main contributions were in the areas of natural gas upgrading and membrane assisted separations in refineries and chemical plants.

Michael’s favourite hobbies are running, hiking and bird watching.