Uzoma Nwabara, Ph.D. is a research scientist in the renewable energy group at the Materials Discovery Research Institute. She focuses on designing durable, active, and cost-effective electrocatalysts for several applications including hydrogen production via water splitting. She leverages the institute’s NanoPrinter, an instrument capable of high-throughput catalyst synthesis. She joined the Materials Discovery team in 2024 from Twelve, a start-up in Berkeley, Calif., where she scaled up CO₂ electroreduction and developed characterization methods and setups.

Nwabara received her Ph.D. in chemical and biomolecular engineering in 2021. Her research focused on designing selective catalysts for and improving the durability of electrochemical CO₂ reduction conducted in flow cells.

She received her B.S.E. in chemical engineering with a minor in business from University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and her Ph.D. from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.