2026 Talented 12: Aisulu Aitbekova

The industrial processes that generate our fuels and chemicals are notoriously energy hungry. To help curb those appetites, chemical engineer Aisulu Aitbekova is uniting two fundamental power sources. “I’m interested in designing new processes where we can couple light and heat as driving forces to make reactions more efficient,” she says.

With a track record that includes thermal catalysis, photochemistry, and reactor engineering, Aitbekova launched her own research group at Carnegie Mellon University in August 2025 to apply that experience to sustainable chemicals production. “I’m very excited,” she says. “I really enjoy taking concepts from different fields to create new directions.”

Born and raised in Kazakhstan, Aitbekova expected to parlay her undergraduate chemical engineering degree into a career in the oil and gas industry. But a summer internship at the University of California, Santa Barbara, upended those plans. “That experience was the pivotal moment that changed my career outlook,” she says. “I got firsthand experience of research; I got excited about the idea of pursuing graduate studies, and that started my academic career.”

Aitbekova went on to a PhD with chemical engineer Matteo Cargnello at Stanford University, where she developed a method to stabilize palladium-platinum nanoparticles by encapsulating them inside alumina so they could withstand temperatures up to 1100 °C. These precious metals are used in the catalytic converters that reduce harmful emissions in vehicle exhausts, and the encapsulation strategy meant that far less of the metals was needed for good catalytic performance.

Aitbekova started to harness the power of light during her postdoctoral research with Harry Atwater at the California Institute of Technology. She helped develop a two-stage reactor that first used solar electricity to convert CO₂ into ethylene and other products and then applied solar thermal energy to stitch those products together into 2-methyl-2-pentenal, a precursor of the fuel molecule hexane.

At Caltech, Aitbekova also met inorganic chemist Harry Gray and became fascinated by his previous work on molybdenum cluster compounds that capture light and transfer its energy to other molecules. The robust molybdenum photosensitizers can boost regular dioxygen molecules into an electronically excited state called singlet oxygen. “Because singlet oxygen has high energy, it can do really cool chemistry without requiring any catalysts,” she explains.

Aitbekova’s idea is to use light to make singlet oxygen and then apply heat so that the excited molecule performs selective oxidations—a broad class of reactions widely used in the chemical industry. For example, she hopes this could convert dienes (such as butadiene) into oxygenated products, including carbonyls and alcohol derivatives.

A current industrial oxygenation of butadiene requires high pressure, high temperature, and a palladium-tellurium catalyst. Aitbekova thinks singlet oxygen could achieve this conversion in the gas phase in much milder conditions and without a catalyst.

Her group is using spectroscopy and computational reaction modeling to understand the mechanisms of the light- and heat-driven stages of this process in order to fine-tune each part to optimize performance. The team will also design and build the reactors needed to study and operate the reactions.

Aitbekova’s interest in practical, sustainable chemistry underpins another project in her lab: using electrochemistry to incorporate CO₂ into simple petrochemicals to make industrially useful carboxylic acids. “I like working on fundamental science, figuring out what happens on a molecular scale, but I’m more excited if it has some application for real-world impact,” she says.

Gray notes that singlet oxygen is not commonly used in industry and that there’s a risk it could simply chew up a reaction’s organic molecules. “But if she shows you can do gas-phase chemistry with singlet oxygen this way, it will be a whole new area of inquiry for organic photochemistry,” he says. “So it’s high risk, but it’s potentially very high payoff. And if anybody can make it work, I’m pretty sure she can. She’s a terrific young investigator and very determined.”

Aitbekova is certainly undaunted by the challenge. “I’m a very optimistic person,” she says. “So with perseverance, some curiosity, and really good students, I think there is lots to be accomplished.”