Alum Jeetain Mittal Named 2014 Sloan Research Fellow
Jeetain Mittal, Ph.D. ChE 2007, has been named a 2014 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in Chemistry.
Mittal is one of 126 scholars in the United States and Canada to receive the award, which recognizes the most promising scientific researchers working today. Recipients’ achievements and potential identify them as rising stars and place them among the next generation of scientific leaders.
“These are very competitive fellowships, with typically only one or two chemical engineers selected per year,” said Thomas Truskett, McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering Chair.
The Sloan Fellowship is the second significant early-career honor Mittal has received recently. He also won the Allan P. Colburn Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) in November— the Institute’s most prestigious award given annually to one chemical engineer under the age of 36 for excellence in publications.
“These honors are a great recognition of Jeetain’s innovative contributions,” said Truskett. “He is quickly establishing himself as one of the top young chemical engineering professors in the country.”
Mittal was recognized by both organizations for his work in the area of molecular modeling of various biological phenomena such as unfolding of intrinsically disordered proteins, DNA and carbon nanotube interactions and the effects of confinement on stability of proteins. He is currently the P.C. Rossin Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Mittal has authored more than 45 peer-reviewed articles, 24 of which came in his first three years as an assistant professor. He currently supervises six Ph.D. students in his lab, the Biophysics & Soft Matter Group. He joined Lehigh University in 2009, after a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in the laboratory for chemical physics. Before receiving his Ph.D. from UT Austin in 2007, Mittal earned an M.Tech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in 2002 and a B.Tech. degree from Punjab Technical University in 2000, all in chemical engineering.
Since the Sloan Research Fellowship awards started in 1955, 42 Fellows have gone on to win a Nobel Prize in their fields, 16 have won the Fields Medal in mathematics, 13 have won the John Bates Clark Medal in economics, and 63 have received the National Medal of Science. Other McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering faculty who have received a Sloan Research Fellowship include Peter Rossky, Venkat Ganesan, and Thomas Truskett.
Tags: awards, chemical engineering, DNA research, Jeetain Mittal, Kudos, McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, molecular modeling, research, Sloan research Fellowships, top researchers, top scientists, UT, UT Austin