Sholl is the John F. Brock III School Chair of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. His research uses computational materials modeling to accelerate development of new materials for energy-related applications, including generation and storage of gaseous and liquid fuels and chemicals and carbon dioxide mitigation.
His talk, entitled, “Expanding the chemical palette for reliable adsorption-based separations,” will be at 2 p.m. Thursday, September 20, 2018, in 116 Roger Adams Laboratory.
Prior to his appointment at Georgia Tech, Sholl was on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University. He grew up in Australia and received his undergraduate degree in Theoretical Physics from the Australian National University. He then received a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Sholl has published over 320 papers and has also written a textbook on Density Functional Theory, a quantum chemistry method that is widely applied through the physical sciences and engineering. He is a Senior Editor of the ACS journal Langmuir and was instrumental in leading the development of RAPID, a $70 million Department of Energy-funded manufacturing institute focused on process intensification run by AIChE.
The Parr Lecture is named after Samuel W. Parr, the founder of chemical engineering at Illinois. A Granville, Ill. native, Parr became professor of applied chemistry and head of industrial chemistry at Illinois in 1891. He was a prolific author and made numerous discoveries. Parr developed an alloy—called Illium, made of nine different metals—that has powerful corrosion-resisting properties. He also invented the first simplified instrument for measuring the heating value of coal.