Branko studied chemical engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (BS) and Tufts University (PhD). His PhD work focused on the development of alkali-promoted platinum nanocatalysts for the water-gas shift reaction and biomass-to-fuel processes. He joined the Friend lab in July 2013 and is currently investigating the use of nanoporous gold (npAu) for oxidation and coupling reactions. In addition to developing a reactor for evaluating the catalytic performance of npAu, Branko uses electron microscopy (TEM, STEM) and spectroscopy (XPS) tools to characterize and better understand the reactive and surface properties of such materials.

Nanoporous gold is an exciting new nanostructured alloy material that has been shown to be highly active for selective alcohol oxidation reactions, an important class of reactions for the chemicals industry. Under reaction conditions this material is highly dynamic, resulting in a high degree of atomic diffusion at the surface. In order to gain a better understanding of the atomic-scale origins of the catalytic activity, we are using reaction studies at various pressure regimes (UHV to atmospheric) as well as a number of in-situ characterization techniques, such as environmental transmission electron microscopy (E-TEM) and atmospheric pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (AP-XPS) to follow these atomic-level changes as they happen.