Group Leader
Marina Micari is an SNSF Ambizione Group Leader at EPFL. She is hosted by the Laboratory of Advanced Separations at the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering.
Marina is a chemical engineer (B.Sc. and M.Sc. at University of Palermo, Italy) and she earned the Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Stuttgart, Germany.
Prior to being awarded an Ambizione grant in July 2024, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Advanced Separations at EPFL, where she worked with Prof. Kumar Varoon Agrawal.
Her research interests are in the areas of gas and liquid separation processes, mathematical modelling and optimisation, techno-economic and environmental impact analyses.
Ph.D. students
Stefania Bempeli is a Chemical Engineer, MEng and has started the Ph.D. in the lab in March 2025. She works on the multi-objective optimization of post-combustion capture processes, including membrane-based and adsorption-based processes.
Moein Fazli Mamaghani is a Chemical Engineer, MEng and has started the Ph.D. in the lab in March 2025. He works on the modelling and optimization of processes for Direct Air Capture, with particular focus on hybrid systems based on the combination of adsorption and membrane processes.
Master students
Hitesh Sewani is a master student in the Energy Science and Technology program at ETH Zurich. He is doing the master thesis in the lab and he is working on the development of machine learning-based surrogate models for membrane processes and on their integration into techno-economic and environmental impact assessment models.
Alumni
Yannick Detrois (semester project)
Adam Zinebi (semester project)
Romain Birling (semester project)
Collaborators
Prof. Agrawal (Laboratory of Advanced Separations, EPFL) and Prof. Queen (Laboratory of Functional Inorganic Materials, EPFL) have leading expertise in the manufacturing of materials for membrane and adsorption processes.
We closely collaborate with the LAS and the LFIM groups. They provide us experimental data on advanced materials to be included in the process models and we develop guidelines for further enhancement in materials’ performances.
Prof. Bardow (Energy and Process System Engineering, ETH) and Prof. Guillen-Gosalbez (Sustainable Process System Engineering Lab, ETH) are experts in the field of process system engineering and life cycle assessment applied to industrial processes.
We collaborate in the development of seamlessly integrated models including technical, economic and environmental assessment of gas separation processes.
Prof. Jones (Predictive Control Lab, EPFL) is an expert in optimisation and predictive control methods.
We collaborate in the development of high-performing bayesian optimisation algorithms for computationally expensive models, as the adsorption model.
