Chemical and biomolecular engineering assistant professor Alexander V. Mironenko has been named a recipient of the 2026 Emerging Innovator Award, as part of Founders' Week at the University of Illinois.
The Emerging Innovator Award recognizes faculty members who submitted an invention disclosure to the University’s Office of Technology Management for the first time during the preceding year.
As a member of this year's class of Emerging Innovators, Mironenko will be recognized during the Founders Showcase Evening Session on Friday, October 2, 2026.
Mironenko joined the department in August 2020. His research focuses on developing theory-driven quantum mechanical methods to lower the cost of structure and chemical reactivity predictions of molecules and materials.
The award specifically recognizes his recent patent disclosure for a novel computational pipeline utilizing Nonempirical Tight-Binding (NTB) theory, first introduced by the Mironenko group. While highly accurate quantum mechanical calculations are essential across scientific disciplines, traditional methods are notoriously slow and computationally expensive, often creating a bottleneck in modern research and development pipelines. Mironenko’s invention overcomes these hardware limitations by fundamentally altering how molecular potential energy surfaces and electronic properties are computed.
Founders’ Week is intended to bring together the many people who contribute to Illinois’ culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. Now in its third year, the annual event brings together the university's extended ecosystem to celebrate collective successes and build what's next.