Alumnus Joins MIT Chemical Engineering Faculty

Zach Smith (Texas ChE Ph.D. ’14) has accepted an offer to join MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering as an assistant professor. His faculty appointment will begin Jan. 1, 2017.

Smith completed his graduate training at Texas ChE with Professors Benny Freeman and Don Paul, developing structure and property relationships for gas diffusion and sorption in polyimides, perfluoropolymers, and related materials. His postdoctoral training, under the guidance of Professor Jeffrey Long at the University of California Berkeley, focuses on designing coordination solids (i.e., metal-organic frameworks) for selective adsorption-based separations.

“Professor Paul and I are very pleased to see our former student, Zach Smith, get this fantastic opportunity,” Dr. Freeman said. “It was clear from the beginning that Zach was very special and would go far. We could not be more proud of Zach and his outstanding accomplishments to date, and we look forward to watching him grow his own research program and take his place among the leaders in this field.”

Smith’s research at MIT will focus on designing the next generation of polymers and porous materials needed to replace energy-inefficient and environmentally harmful separations currently practiced in industry today.

 

 

Tags: Benny Freeman, Department of Chemical Engineering, Don Paul, McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, MIT, polymers, porous materials, Texas ChE, The University of Texas at Austin, Zach Smith