Ignasi Palou-Rivera, PhD

Executive Director and Chief Technology Officer

RAPID Manufacturing Institute

Ignasi Palou-Rivera is the Executive Director and Chief Technology Officer of the RAPID Manufacturing Institute. Additionally, he serves as the President of the US Manufacturing Innovation Council (an independent non-profit connecting the Manufacturing USA institutes) and the Chair of the Manufacturing USA Council. With a career spanning more than 25 years, Ignasi has diverse expertise in chemical process development, process modeling, refinery planning, process technology valuation and commercialization, and R&D management.

Prior to joining RAPID in 2017, Ignasi held roles at Aspentech, Applied Materials, BP, LanzaTech, and Argonne National Laboratory. In 2023, Ignasi was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and has been heavily involved as a volunteer in both in the Computing & Systems Technology Division (CAST) and the Sustainable Engineering Forum (SEF) AIChE Communities. Ignasi is a Past Chair of the Sustainable Engineering Forum, part of the Institute for Sustainability (IfS) Board, and a member of the PAIC Policy Committee.

Furthermore, Ignasi also teaches on entrepreneurship and IP management as an adjunct faculty at the Illinois Institute of Technology. His educational background includes an Engineer degree from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona, a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and was a post-doctoral researcher at MIT.

Efficient Recovery of Low-Grade Heat as an Enabler of Industrial Decarbonization and the Energy Transition