Fueling the Future: GEM Fellow Follows Vision for Renewable Energy at MDRI
Roulince Dukuly is passionate about making meaningful contributions to advancing renewable energy – something he’s confident UL Research Institutes’ Materials Discovery Research Institute will achieve in the future.
Dukuly is a GEM Fellow who worked with MDRI in summer 2025 while completing his Ph.D. in chemical engineering at Columbia University.
His work focuses on renewable energy — specifically researching the possibilities of hydrogen fuel use in modes of transportation.
“If we can design large-scale applications of these materials, we could potentially see the use of these hydrogen-based clean energy vehicles, and decarbonize the transportation sector,” he said.
Part of his work focuses on the development and application of metal organic frameworks as efficient storage materials that could effectively store hydrogen so that it can be utilized in hydrogen-powered vehicles.
“We want to help drive the transition of our society from the fossil fuel-based energy economy to a renewable energy-based economy,” Dukuly said. “Matching with MDRI during the GEM Fellowship matching process was perfect — MDRI’s focus on cost-effective materials for renewable energy matched up well with my graduate work on using seawater electrolysis for generating clean hydrogen fuel that can replace harmful fossil fuels like oil and coal while also reducing the use of scarce freshwater resources in water electrolysis.”
In his GEM Fellowship, Dukuly was able to gain greater insight into working in an industry career versus academia — a choice many Ph.D. students face as they near graduation. He said that his fellowship experience was critical in that decision-making process, and he now feels like he has enough context to understand how his education and training may prepare him to be successful in any environment. That was supplemented by the way his MDRI colleagues welcomed him into the professional research world.
“During my time with MDRI, I felt guided by leadership and my supervisor in accomplishing my goals, felt warmly surrounded by kind colleagues in the lab, and I feel like I’ve become a part of the MDRI family,” he said.
