Two ChBE professors have received named appointments from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences (LAS) in recognition of their contributions to research and education at the University of Illinois. Ying Diao has been named an LAS Dean’s Distinguished Professorial Scholar, which is presented to excellent faculty who are under consideration to be promoted from associate to full professor. Xiao Su has been named a Helen Corley Petit Scholar, which is given to early career faculty members in recognition of their scholarship and teaching.
Diao joined the Illinois faculty in 2015, where she recently received the Campus Distinguished Promotion award from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Provost. Her research group focuses on understanding the assembly of functional polymer and innovating printing approaches that enable structural control down to the molecular and nanoscale to achieve a future of cleaner environment and greener energy. She has received many awards for her work, including being named a Technology Review Innovators Under 35 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2016), the NSF CAREER Award (2018), the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry (2018), the NASA Early Career Faculty Award (2020), and AIChE Owens Corning Early Career Award (2024).
Su has been on the faculty at Illinois since 2019, where he researches supramolecular engineering of electrochemical interfaces, with a focus on molecularly selective separations, functional materials discovery and process intensification. Among his honors, Su has received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2019), the American Chemical Society Victor K. Lamer Award (2020), the International Society of Electrochemistry Elsevier Prize for Green Electrochemistry (2021), the American Chemical Society Unilever Award (2023), and the American Institute of Chemical Engineering Fractional Research Inc./John G. Kunesh Award (2023).
A full list of LAS faculty honored with a named position can be found here.