Chemical and biomolecular engineering (ChBE) professor Xiao Su has been selected as the winner of the 2024 American Chemical Society (ACS) Satinder Ahuja Young Investigator Award in Separation Science. The award is given annually by the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry in recognition of outstanding contributions to the field of analytical chemistry and separation science by a young chemist or chemical engineer from academia, industry or national laboratories.
Jim Grinias, chair of the ACS Subdivision on Chromatography and Separations Chemistry said the selection committee was very impressed with Su’s outstanding research contributions to the field of chemical separations, which one member called “revolutionary,” and noted his “innovative work developing new electrochemical approaches to replace the most energetically intensive and chemically wasteful separations.”
Su has been on the ChBE Illinois faculty since 2019 where he researches supramolecular engineering of electrochemical interfaces, with a focus on molecularly selective separations, functional materials discovery and process intensification. These themes have applications in chemical manufacturing, resource recovery, materials design, synthesis and processing, and water purification. Su earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Waterloo in 2011 and his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2017.
A symposium recognizing Su for this award will be held at the 2025 Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy in Boston, Mass.
The ACS award announcement is available here.