Christian E. Alvarez-Pugliese is the Managing Director of CASFER (NSF Engineering Research Center for Advancing Sustainable and Distributed Fertilizer Production) and the Institute for Sustainability and Circular Economy (ISCE). He has over 15 years of experience leading and conducting research in electrochemistry at laboratory, pilot, and semi-industrial scale. His academic background includes a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, and bachelor’s degrees in both Chemical Engineering and Economics from Universidad del Valle (Colombia). He Joined CETI Lab in 2021 as Senior Research Associate, role that he executed until March 2025.

His research expertise spans the scale-up of sustainable electrochemical reactors, adsorption and electrochemical processes for nutrient recovery, recovery of Rare Earth Elements (REEs) from fly ash and end-of-life permanent magnets, electrocatalysis for ammonia oxidation, boron-doped diamond (BDD) electrochemical oxidation of industrial effluents, iron electro-dissolution and coagulation for landfill leachate treatment, gold adsorption/electro-elution and electrodeposition from activated carbon, and catalytic ozonation of wastewater.

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Dr. Alvarez-Pugliese is an active member of the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE), American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and the Electrochemical Society (ECS), and serves as Associate Editor for the Springer Nature Journal of Applied Electrochemistry. He has also been involved in innovation-based entrepreneurship and serves as a consultant in technology transfer and business development.

• Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, Universidad del Valle, (2020)

• B.S., Economics, Universidad del Valle, (2018)

• B.S., Chemical Engineering, Universidad del Valle, (2011)

• Nutrient recovery

• Waste valorization

• Rare earth elements electrochemical recovery

• Electrochemical wastewater treatment

• Scale-up of electrochemical reactors

• Spend quality time with family

• Travel around the world

• Tennis