The Engineering Directorate at the NSF established the Distinguished Lecture Series in 1997. Previous lecturers include Nobel Laureates Heinrich Rohrer, Jean-Marie Lehn, Dan Tsui and John Pople.
Tirrell's lecture will explain how and why self-assembly is a promising tool for producing materials and chemical products with unprecedented applications in biomedial, electronic, catalytic and separation process technologies.
Using self-assembly to synthesize materials involves creating or building into parts of a materials system -- such as molecules, particles and objects -- enough information content so that the end product actually forms spontaneously. However, spontaneous creation does not suggest instantaneous formation, Tirrell will warn, as manufacturing processes and large-scale implementation will pose obstacles.
Tirrell has been a Sloan and a Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award and has received the Allan P. Colburn, Charles Stine and the Professional Progress Awards from AIChE. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a fellow of the American Physical Society. In 2003, he concluded more than two years of service as co-chair of the steering committee for the National Research Council report, "Beyond the Molecular Frontier: Challenges for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering," published by the National Academy Press. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Cottage Health System, in Santa Barbara, California.
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