Dr. Kyriakos C. Stylianou

Professor of Chemistry

From Larnaca, Cyprus, to building new materials for a more sustainable world

Kyriakos Stylianou’s scientific journey started in Larnaca, Cyprus, but it has taken him through Greece, the UK, Spain, Switzerland, and eventually the United States. After completing 26 months of military service in Cyprus, Kyriakos moved to the University of Ioannina in Greece to study Chemistry. He completed his degree in just 3.5 years, graduating at the top of his class and receiving multiple awards for his academic performance.

Next stop: Liverpool, UK. At the University of Liverpool, working with Matthew J. Rosseinsky, Kyriakos earned his Ph.D. in Materials Chemistry and entered the fascinating world of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) whose structures can be designed at the molecular level to create highly specific functions. Then came an opportunity to move beyond conventional MOF chemistry. After receiving a prestigious Marie Curie Individual Fellowship, he joined Daniel Maspoch at ICN2 in Barcelona. There, he combined his synthetic background with surface chemistry, exploring how MOFs could be miniaturized, patterned, and grown on surfaces using approaches including nanolithography and inkjet printing, and how nanoscale MOFs could ultimately function as drug-delivery platforms. In 2015, another adventure began. Kyriakos joined Berend Smit’s LSMO at EPFL Valais in Sion, Switzerland, as a Team Leader and began developing his independent research program. His team pursued MOFs for carbon capture, photocatalysis, and chemical sensing, while collaborations across EPFL helped broaden his research at the interface of chemistry, computation, and materials science.

And then came Oregon. In 2019, Kyriakos joined the Department of Chemistry at Oregon State University as an Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2024, and to Professor in 2026, where he leads the Materials Discovery Laboratory (MaD Lab). Today, the MaD Lab asks a simple question: Can we understand chemistry inside the pores of a material well enough to design its function? MaD Lab studies, at the molecular level, how molecules and ions interact with the internal surfaces of MOFs and related porous materials—and uses that understanding to tackle major challenges in CO2 capture from flue gas and ambient air, carbon conversion, hydrogen generation through photocatalytic water splitting, molecular separations, and selective organic transformations.

But for Kyriakos, science is also about how people learn to think. One message he regularly shares with his students is: Think cleverly in the laboratory. Challenge yourself. Dig deeper. Become comfortable with being uncomfortable in science. And most importantly: to be a leader, not a follower. Because the most exciting discoveries rarely come from following the path everyone already knows. They come from having the curiosity and persistence to create a new one.

Publications. Google Scholar

Awards
2026. Excellence in Postdoctoral Mentoring Award, OSU
2024. Teacher Scholar Award, College of Science, OSU
2024. Disease Mechanism and Prevention Fund Award
2024. Scialog Fellow for Negative Emissions Science
2023. Boomerang’s Carbon Capture Research Donation
2023. Medical Research Foundation, New Investigator Grant
2023. Industrial Partnership Award, OSU
2023. Research Advancement Award, OSU
2022. Loyd F. Carter Award for Outstanding and Inspirational Teaching in Science, Undergraduate, College of Science, OSU
2021. James H Krueger teaching award, Chemistry, OSU
2020. SciRis-ii award, College of Science, OSU
2016. Sponsorship of Ambizione Energy grant (Switzerland)
2012. Award of the Marie Curie Fellowship (Spain)
2007. EPSRC award for Ph.D. studies at the University of Liverpool (United Kingdom)
2005 & 2006. Educational grant for the top undergraduate student of the year (3rd and 4th years of study) (Greece)

Email. kyriakos.stylianou@oregonstate.edu

Hobbies. Dinner with good friends, enjoying the sun and swimming in the Mediterranean Sea, listening to pop-cheesy music (Lady Gaga mainly), and watching Liverpool FC and Barcelona FC soccer matches.

Dr. Andrzej Gładysiak

Bio. Andrzej Gładysiak is from Poznań, Poland. He earned his MSc working with Andrzej Katrusiak at AMU and PhD with Berend Smit at EPFL. Originally an inorganic chemist and a crystallographer, his research interests have expanded over the years, and now also include materials synthesis, carbon dioxide capture and conversion, and hydrogen storage. It is by far not a coincidence he joined the MaD lab since all these research directions can be pursued using MOFs as a platform.

Research Interests. MOFs crystallography: use of X-ray techniques to study MOF transitions and elucidate structure-property relationships.

Achievements.
– 2024 Postdoctoral Research Excellence Award, OSU
– >25 publications in Nature, JACS, Chem. Sci. ACS AMI
– Postdoc at Columbia University with Prof. Alissa Park
– Travel grant from the Swiss Academy of Natural Science to participate in the European Crystallography meeting in 2018
– Award for the best young crystallographer – Crystallography school in 2017

Email. andrzej.gladysiak@oregonstate.edu

Hobbies. Crystallography, hiking, reading books, cooking

Ankit K. Yadav

Postdoctoral Scholar (Sept. 2021 – Sept. 2026: Ph.D.; Sept. 2026 – present)

Bio. Ankit grew up in North India. He graduated from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, in 2021 with a BS-MS dual degree. He joined the Advance Porous Material (APM) Lab in his third year of college, where he was supervised by Professor Ramanathan Vaidyanathan. It was there that he learned about the awesome Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs). He worked on two projects for his master’s thesis: “Bimetallic (Mn/Co) oxide nanoparticles supported over a Covalent Organic Frameworks (COFs) for oxygen evolution reaction” and “Design and synthesis of organic phosphor using Covalent Organic Frameworks (COFs) for white light emission under UV light.” He was accepted to Oregon State University in 2021 to pursue a Ph.D. He joined the MaD lab and carried on working with MOFs under Dr. Kyriakos Stylianou’s supervision and he obtained hi Ph.D in September 2026 with an astonishing 20+ publications and several university and national awards. He is currently working on MOFs and POFs for CO2 capture.

Research Interests. As a ‘synthetic genius‘ – this is how my Ph.D. advisor calls me, I am interested in growing MOF and MOP crystals and learning how these materials are assembled. Once I control their growth, I am interested in studying their potential for carbon capture.

Email. yadavan@oregonstate.edu

Hobbies. Cooking Indian food, cinema, dancing, growing crystals

Jacob Lessard

Graduate Student (Sept. 2023 – present)

Bio. Jacob is originally from Grants Pass, OR, and he earned his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from OSU in March 2023. Jacob worked in the MaD Lab as an undergraduate, and the ability to continue his research was a major factor in his choice to pursue graduate studies at OSU.

Research Interests. Photocatalyzed hydrogen-deuterium exchange in molecules confined in metal-organic frameworks

Email. lessardj@oregonstate.edu

Hobbies. Basketball, fast cars, playing pool, hiking

Pakhin Pawornwitoon

Graduate Student (June 2024 – present)

Bio.

Research Interests.

Email. pawornwp@oregonstate.edu

Hobbies. Cooking Thai food, gym, hiking, social media

Silas Blessed

Graduate Student (June 2024 – present)

Bio.

Research Interests.

Email. blesseds@oregonstate.edu

Hobbies.

Nidhi Deswal

Graduate Student (June 2025 – present)

Bio.

Research Interests.

Email. 

Hobbies.

Prayash Mohanty

Graduate Student (September 2025 – present)

Bio.

Research Interests.

Email. 

Hobbies.

Antonis Yiallouros

Graduate Student (September 2025 – present)

Bio.

Research Interests.

Email. 

Hobbies.

Mohammed Rasheed Abdullah

Graduate Student (September 2025 – present)

Bio.

Research Interests.

Email. 

Hobbies.

1. Tess G. Kloster
2. Marieke Johnson
3. Elizabeth Law
4. Nicole Barakiewicz
5. Than Changto
6. Chanya Saicheua

Dr. Emmanuel Musa Nyela

Graduate Student within MaD Lab (Jan. 2021 – present)

Achievements.
– Six (2) first author publications (15 publications)
– Graduate teaching assistant award in the winter term 2023
– Oral presentation at Analytical Chemistry Conference (Belgium 2023), ACS NORM 2024, IUCCP, OSU

Dr. Kyle Smith

Graduate Student within MaD Lab (Sept. 2020 – September 2025)

Achievements.
– Five (5) first author publications (11 in total)
– ARCS Fellow
– Oral presentation at ICCC (Japan 2025), ACS NORM 2024, IUCCP, OSU

Dr. Tara Hurley

Graduate Student within MaD Lab (Sept. 2019 – Dec. 2024)

Achievements.
– Four (2) first author publications
– Graduate teaching assistant award in the winter term 2023
– Oral presentation at Analytical Chemistry Conference (Belgium 2023), ACS NORM 2024, IUCCP, OSU

Dr. Nan-Chieh Chiu

Graduate Student within MaD Lab (Sept. 2020 – July 2024)

Achievements:
– Seventeen (17) publications incl. six (6) first author publications
– Poster presentation at the International MOF Conference in Dresden, Germany
– Graduate teaching assistant award in F2022
– Renewable Energy Award, 2023
– Poster presentation at the European MOF Conference in Granada, Spain, 2023

Dr. Kimia Kiaei

Graduate Student within MaD Lab (Sept. 2019 – Dec. 2023)

Achievements.
– Two (2) first author publications
– Graduate teaching assistant award in the winter term 2023
– Poster presentation at IUCCP, OSU

Ryan P. Loughran, MS

Tanner Rookard, MS

David Le – Graduate school: Delaware University,

Ian Harreschou – Graduate school: University if Minnesota,

Samuel Wolff – Graduate school: University of Washington,

Chloe Ramsperger – Graduate school: USC,

Noah Tufts – Graduate school: The Ohio State University,

Karlie Wiese – Graduate school: Oregon State University,

Michael Brodeur – Graduate school: University of Pennsylvania,

James Ho – Graduate school: Northwestern University

Isabelle Brooks,

Thao Mi Anthony,

Christopher Flood – HP in Corvallis,

Carson St Denis,

Christina Groening,

Benjamin Skanes,  

Jared Stafford,  

Ava Thomas,

Lewis Shotton,

Mark Merrem – Merck,

Timothy Walz,

Delaney Radke,

Noah Hopkins,

Maddy Beck,

Peemapat Jumrusprasert,

Pakhin Pawornwitoon – Graduate School, OSU

Dissarin Thampetraruk – UCL MSc,

Massakorn Sricharoenkul – UCL MSc

Bhurinat, Konne  – Graduate School, OSU,

Siraphop, Titi – Graduate School, OSU