Richard West
Professor and Associate Chair for Research,
Chemical Engineering
Office
- 226 Cullinane
- 617.373.5163
Lab
- 230 Cullinane
- 617.373.5048
Research Focus
AI and automated mechanism generation for sustainable fuels, catalysis, and combustion chemistry
About
Prof. West’s group combines computational chemistry, data science, and machine learning to automate the construction of detailed microkinetic models for complex reacting systems. A central thread is the open-source Reaction Mechanism Generator (RMG) software, to which his group has made major contributions including enabling predictions for halogenated hydrocarbons and heterogeneous catalysis. Current efforts span combustion chemistry, PFAS remediation, catalytic reactor design, and—most recently—electrocatalysis for CO₂ conversion, where automated mechanism generation can accelerate the discovery of pathways and catalysts needed for decarbonization. He is also a member of the Cantera steering committee and an advocate for open-source software and reproducible research practices.
Prof. West joined the Chemical Engineering Department in Fall 2011.
Education
- B.A., M.Eng. (Chemical Engineering) University of Cambridge, 2004
- Ph.D. (Chemical Engineering) University of Cambridge, 2009
- Postdoctoral Research Associate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008-2011
Honors & Awards
- 2026 Faculty Research Team Award
- 2025 Outstanding Faculty Service Award
- 2021 College of Engineering Faculty Fellow
- 2018 NSF CAREER Award
- 2017 Dick Sioui Teaching Award in Chemical Engineering
- 2014 American Chemical Society Doctoral New Investigator Award
Research Overview
AI and automated mechanism generation for sustainable fuels, catalysis, and combustion chemistry
Selected Research Projects
- Disciplinary Improvements: The Prometheus Initiative: FAIR model and data cyberinfrastructure for predictive combustion science
- – Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
- Accelerating Electrocatalyst Innovation: High-Throughput Automated Microkinetic, Multiscale, and Techno-economic Modeling
- – Principal Investigator, ARPA-E
- CAREER: Predictive Kinetic Modeling of Halogenated Hydrocarbon Combustion
- – Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
- Collaborative Research: Autonomous Systems for Experimental and Computational Data Generation and Data-Driven Modeling of Combustion Kinetics
- – Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
- Exascale-Enabled Computational Tools for Complex Chemical Systems
- – Co-Investigator, Department of Energy
- Frameworks: Collaborative Research: Extensible and Community-Driven Thermodynamics, Transport, and Chemical Kinetics Modeling with Cantera: Expanding to Diverse Scientific Domains
- – Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
Department Research Areas
Selected Publications
- M. Johnson, D. Farina, L. Kavalsky, J. Zàdor, R.H. West, V. Viswanathan, W.H. Green. Automatic Generation of Chemical Mechanisms for Electrochemical Systems: Solid Electrolyte Interphase Formation in Lithium Batteries. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C. 129 (28), 12667–12678, 2025, 10.1021/acs.jpcc.5c00507.
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C. Blais, C. Xu, R.H. West. Uncertainty Quantification of Linear Scaling, Machine Learning, and DFT Derived Thermodynamics for the Catalytic Partial Oxidation of Methane on Rhodium. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C. 128 (41), 2024, 17418–17433 10.1021/acs.jpcc.4c05107
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C. Xu, E.J. Mazeau, R.H. West. Implementing the Blowers-Masel Approximation to Scale Activation Energy Based on Reaction Enthalpy in Mean-field Microkinetic Modeling for Catalytic Methane Partial Oxidation. ACS Catalysis, 14 (10), 2024, 8013–8029. 10.1021/acscatal.3c05436
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D.S. Farina Jr., S.K. Sirumalla, R.H. West. Automating the generation of detailed kinetic models for halocarbon combustion with the Reaction Mechanism Generator. Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, 39, 2023, 223-232 10.1016/j.proci.2022.07.204
- E.J. Mazeau, P. Satpute, K. Blondal, C.F. Goldsmith, R.H. West, Automated Mechanism Generation Using Linear Scaling Relationships and Sensitivity Analyses Applied to Catalytic Partial Oxidation of Methane, ACS Catalysis 11 (12), 2021, 7114-7125. 10.1021/acscatal.0c04100
- M. Liu, A. Grinberg Dana, M.S. Johnson, M.J. Goldman, A. Jocher, A.M. Payne, C.A. Grambow, K. Han, N.W. Yee, E.J. Mazeau, K. Blondal, R.H. West, C.F. Goldsmith, W.H. Green, Reaction Mechanism Generator v3.0: Advances in Automatic Mechanism Generation, Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling 61 (6), 2021, 2686-2696. 10.1021/acs.jcim.0c01480
- K. Blondal, J. Jelic, E. Mazeau, F. Studt, R.H. West, C.F. Goldsmith, Computer-Generated Kinetics for Coupled Heterogeneous/ Homogeneous Systems: A Case Study in Catalytic Combustion of Methane on Platinum, Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 58 (38), 2019, 17682-17691. 10.1021/acs.iecr.9b01464
- B.L. Slakman, R.H. West, Kinetic Solvent Effects in Organic Reactions, Journal of Physical Organic Chemistry, 32, 2019, e3904. 10.1002/poc.3904
- P.L. Bhoorasingh, B.L. Slakman, F. Seyedzadeh Khanshan, J. Cain, R.H. West, Automated Transition State Theory Calculations for High- Throughput Kinetics, The Journal of Physical Chemistry A, 121, 2017, 6896-6904. 10.1021/acs.jpca.7b07361
- C.F. Goldsmith, R.H. West, Automatic Generation of Microkinetic Mechanisms for Heterogeneous Catalysis, The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 121(18), 2017, 9970-9981. 10.1021/acs.jpcc.7b02133
Jan 29, 2026
Faculty and Staff Awards 2026
Faculty and staff were recognized at the 28th Annual College of Engineering Faculty and Staff Awards for their exceptional service and dedication in support of students, the COE community, and the university during the 2025-2026 academic year.
Aug 22, 2025
Making the Transition from Chemistry to Chemical Engineering
Danielle Lucey, MS’26, chemical engineering, wanted to make the switch from chemistry to chemical engineering to broaden her knowledge and career opportunities. Lucey is now applying all of the skills she has learned from the classroom and co-op to start her intensive thesis research on carbon dioxide hydrogenation.
Aug 18, 2025
Prometheus Initiative Fuels Open Data for Cleaner Combustion Technology
ChE Professor Richard West, in collaboration with Kyle Niemeyer from Oregon State University, was awarded a $599,925 NSF grant for “Disciplinary Improvements: The Prometheus Initiative: FAIR model and data cyberinfrastructure for predictive combustion science.”
Jan 30, 2025
Faculty and Staff Awards 2025
Faculty and staff were recognized at the 27th Annual College of Engineering Faculty and Staff Awards for their exceptional service and dedication in support of students, the COE community, and the university during the 2024-2025 academic year.
Aug 04, 2023
Developing a Computer Model for Carbon Dioxide Conversion
ChE Associate Professor Richard West, ChE/COS Assistant Professor Magda Barecka, and ChE Assistant Professor Qing Zhao were awarded a $500,000 grant for “Accelerating Electrocatalyst Innovation: High-Throughput Automated Microkinetic, Multiscale, and Techno-economic Modeling” as part of the Creating Revolutionary Energy and Technology Endeavors (CREATE) Exploratory Topic managed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).
Dec 13, 2021
I&EC Research’s 2021 Class of Influential Researchers
ChE/BioE Associate Professor Eno Ebong, ChE Assistant Professor Sidi Bencherif, and ChE Associate Professor Richard West were featured on the cover of I&EC Research as 3 of 36 scientists recognized as the 2021 Class of Influential Researchers.
Jan 27, 2020
Spring 2020 PEAK Experiences Awardees
Congratulations to the COE student recipients of the Spring 2020 PEAK Experiences Awards. The PEAK Experiences Awards are a progressively structured sequence of opportunities designed to support learners as they […]
Sep 09, 2019
West to Work on Collaborative NSF Grant to Further Develop Cantera Open-Source Modeling Software
ChE Associate Professor Richard West is part of a $2.5M NSF collaborative effort to further develop and support the successful and popular open-source modeling software Cantera, a suite of tools for problems involving chemical kinetics, thermodynamics, and transport processes.
Apr 05, 2019
Congratulations RISE:2019 Winners
Congratulations to our engineering students who won awards at the RISE:2019 Research, Innovation and Scholarship Expo!
Feb 21, 2019
West's Research Makes the Cover the Journal of Physical Organic Chemistry
The article “Kinetic solvent effects in organic reactions” by ChE Associate Professor Richard West’s group recently made the cover of the March 2019 Issue of the Journal of Physical Organic Chemistry.