Franciscan friar and recent UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) graduate Jimmy Kernan was working in San Francisco’s low-income Tenderloin district when a conversation changed his life.
“We worked with a lot of people facing homelessness, people facing drug addiction, mental illnesses,” Kernan said. “I was having a conversation with one of the other friars and I said, ‘I’m thinking about going back to school, thinking about getting back into science.’ He looked at me, glared really, and said, ‘What are you going to do for the poor?’ That really shaped what has brought me here.”
Through the Master of Engineering (MEng) program at Pritzker Molecular Engineering, Kernan was able to unite his loves of science and service, working on sustainable energy solutions to wean the world off fossil fuels. Historically, the worst effects of both pollution and global climate change hit low-income communities harder.
After graduating in June, Kernan now works at Siena College as a Lecturer in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and as the Assistant Director for Research at Siena's Laudato Si Center for Integral Ecology.
An 800-year-old Italian poem cemented the Franciscan friar’s decision to join PME’s computational modeling materials track.
“St. Francis, our founder, wrote one of the most probably famous pieces of poetry in the medieval time called ‘The Canticle of the Creatures,’ which discusses our relationship to everything that we have around us. And that relationship calls us to responsibility to take care of it,” Kernan said. “Coming here and seeing the work PME does and the opportunities to work on real solutions for sustainability for the next generation of energy technology, it connected very well.”
Molecular corking
Kernan’s research while at PME, conducted remotely through St. Bonaventure University, studied a new way of storing hydrogen as an energy resource.
Unlike fossil fuels, which release a sludge of chemicals harmful to life and climate when consumed, the only byproduct of a hydrogen fuel cell is water. This makes hydrogen a very attractive alternative to fossil fuels, but storage has proven a costly, ungainly hurdle, requiring large liquid vats or pressurized tanks of gas.
The team is looking at molecular corking, a phenomenon first observed in 2013, as a possible solution. This would store hydrogen gas using chemical, not physical, pressure.
In molecular corking, a single-atom alloy sheet such as copper with platinum atoms interspersed serves as the “bottle.” A layer of hydrogen is laid over the alloy surface and a chemical “cork” such as carbon monoxide is spread over that, sealing in the hydrogen until it is released.
“The thing that ended up being observed was that applying the carbon monoxide raised the temperature that hydrogen remained on the metal surface,” Kernan said.
Molecular corking has mainly been studied using carbon monoxide as the cork, but the St. Bonaventure team is also exploring the possibility of using N-heterocyclic carbenes through computational modeling. Kernan is hopeful other materials could prove even more adept at storing hydrogen.
“We’re looking for higher-temperature corks that would be able to hold hydrogen onto metal surfaces to be able to store it in a much more stable way and at a much, much higher density than it can be typically stored,” Kernan said.
MEng Program Director Terry D. Johnson said Kernan is suited for this type of innovative, interdisciplinary approach.
"Jimmy is both curious and thoughtful as a student, someone who likes to make connections between what he's learning in different areas,” said Johnson. “We've discussed everything from engineering pedagogy to the impact that quantum computing will have on information infrastructure in companies of various sizes."
OFM to PME
On Kernan’s first day at PME, one of his classmates asked if he was wearing the full, earth-tone habit of the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor (OFM) as part of a fraternity initiation. Kernan joked back that, technically, he was.
Although wearing the OFM habit is optional when not participating in services, Kernan chooses to wear it full-time, relishing the conversations it creates.
“I think the most common conversation I have is getting stopped on the quad every once in a while and being asked if I’m a Divinity School student,” Kernan said. “A lot of our life is building relationships and encouraging those relationships with people. This just opens the conversation. It gives me the opportunity to share my work in the PME and how it connects to my Franciscan life.”
Kernan is still considering an eventual PhD with the eventual goal of teaching at a Franciscan university, sharing both his scientific acumen and what Pope Francis called the commitment to care for our common home.
“Caring for the earth, working on equitable energy solutions, working on clean energy that is not just for the rich but for everyone is an act of justice,” he said.