Dr. Degirmenci obtained his PhD in Chemical Engineering from Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, in 2007. The topics of his recent research are directed towards the development of sustainable processes for renewables, biomass conversion, in-situ spectroscopy for the understanding of the reaction mechanisms and structure-activity relations in heterogeneous catalysis. Volkan is also one of the Directors of the Humanitarian Engineering MSc programmes offered at the University of Warwick.