Professor Huimin Zhao has received a 2024 Dean's Award for Early Innovation in the Professor category, from The Grainger College of Engineering. This award recognizes exceptional individuals who are working at the early stages of the innovation life cycle to turn their research into products that benefit the world. Candidates are selected from the pool of faculty who made invention disclosures to the Office of Technology Management during the previous academic year.
Zhao is the Steven L. Miller Chair of chemical and biomolecular engineering, where his research interests focus on the interface of synthetic biology, machine learning and laboratory automation. Zhao received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1998 and, prior to joining Illinois in 2000, was a project leader at the Industrial Biotechnology Laboratory of the Dow Chemical Company.
ChBE professors Damien Guironnet and Xiao Su have both received 2024 Dean’s Awards for Innovation Impact – in the associate professor and assistant professor categories, respectively – from Grainger College. This award recognizes exceptional individuals who are working at the early stages of the innovation life cycle to turn their research into products that benefit the world. Candidates are selected from the pool of faculty who filed and were awarded patents in the previous academic year.
Guironnet joined the department in 2014 from BASF Corporation, where he worked as a senior research scientist. At Illinois, his research combines reactor engineering principles with recent advances in catalytic polymerizations to access polymers with unique structures. He received his M.Sc. from Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'enseignement en Chimie in France in 2005 and his Ph.D. from the University of Constance in Germany in 2009.
Su’s research is focused on developing advanced materials for molecularly selective separations and process intensification for applications in energy, environment and chemical manufacturing. He joined the department in 2019 after receiving his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2017.
Zhao, Guironnet and Su will be recognized at the Grainger College Awards Event on Monday, April 29, 2024. Professor Diwakar Shukla, who earlier received a Grainger Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research, will also be honored at the event.