Kent Warren joined the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering (D-MAVT) at ETH Zürich as an Assistant Professor in April 2025. His academic career began more than a decade earlier at Valparaiso University, where he received his BSME in 2015, and continued at the University of Florida, where he earned his PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2019. After completing his doctoral studies, he conducted research in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder, initially as a Postdoctoral Associate and later as a Research Associate. In 2021, he also held a short-term appointment as an Adjunct Professor at Valparaiso University.

Prof. Warren’s research lies at the intersection of mechanical and chemical engineering, applying principles of thermal and fluid sciences, chemical thermodynamics and kinetics, and solid-state ionics to the development of sustainable energy conversion and storage technologies. In particular, from his time as an undergraduate research assistant through his current role as a professor, much of his work has centered on the use of concentrated solar energy as a source of high-quality heat for the production of value-added commodities. Alongside his academic pursuits, he co-founded OMC Thermochemistry in 2021, a company established to commercially deploy the thermochemical platform for low-carbon fuels that he developed while at CU Boulder, and served as its Chief Science Officer for several years. Together, these academic and entrepreneurial experiences have shaped the research program he now leads as head of the Solar Energy Engineering Laboratory (SEEL), where efforts are guided by the recognition that reducing reliance on fossil resources requires solutions grounded in both fundamental scientific understanding and practical implementation.