Michael P. Harold received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Penn State in 1980 and his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Houston in 1985. Mike joined the faculty of the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he became Associate Professor in 1991. In 1991 Mike was a Visiting Research Scholar at the Chemical Technology Department of University of Twente in Enschede, the Netherlands. In 1993 Mike joined DuPont Company where he held several research and supervisory positions. In 1999 Mike was appointed Research Manager of the Chemical Process Fundamentals Group in the Central Research Department of the DuPont Company. While at DuPont Mike was Adjunct Professor at the University of Delaware and was Chair of the Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division of AIChE. In his R&D supervisory roles at DuPont Mike led programs to develop breakthrough technologies for the manufacture of key industrial polymers and their corresponding chemical intermediates, and synthetic melt-spun fibers. Mike then moved back to academia as chair of the UH Department of Chemical Engineering, which later became the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He served this post until fall 2008.
Over the past two 2+ decades spanning academia and industry, Dr. Harold has coupled probing experiments with predictive models to elucidate the interactions of reaction and transport processes in catalytic reactors. He has advanced the understanding of multi-functional reactors and their use in energy and environmental applications, including the membrane reactor for coupled hydrogen generation and purification, and the adsorptive reactor for lean NOx reduction. His pioneering research has helped to reduce byproduct formation, to improve reactor safety, and to intensify the overall chemical process. Areas of particular interest include reaction-separation devices and materials, catalytic reaction engineering, and combustion processes.