News Release

UCSB's Dean Matt Tirrell wins William H. Walker Award from AIChE

Grant and Award Announcement

University of California - Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara, California – October 3, 2007 – Matthew Tirrell, Dean of the College of Engineering and the Richard A. Auhll Professor of Engineering, will be awarded the William H. Walker Award by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) in November at the organization’s annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah. The award is presented to a member of AIChE who has made an outstanding contribution to chemical engineering literature.

Tirrell received his undergraduate education in Chemical Engineering at Northwestern University and his Ph.D. in 1977 in Polymer Science from the University of Massachusetts. From 1977 to 1999, he was on the faculty of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota, where he served as head of the department from 1995 to 1999. He has co-authored about 250 papers and one book and has supervised about 60 Ph.D. students.

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, and delivered its Institute Lecture in 2001. 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, producing a 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.

He has won numerous other honors, including the Engineering Distinguished Lecturer award from the National Science Foundation in 2005; Le Prix Dédale de la Sociéte Française d’Adhesion in 2005; the W.N. Lacey Lectureship in Chemical Engineering award from the California Institute of Technology in 2004; and many others.

Tirrell's research is focused on the manipulation and measurement of interfacial properties of materials used in applications from coatings and adhesion to lubrication and bioengineering.

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AIChE is the world’s leading organization for chemical engineers, with more than 40,000 members from 93 countries.

Media Contacts:
Barbara Bronson Gray, 818.889.5415; bbgray@engineering.ucsb.edu
Dean Matthew Tirrell, 805.893.3141; tirrell@engineering.ucsb.edu


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