The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) has announced that Vice President for Research Jonathan Dordick will receive the 2015 Food, Pharmaceutical and Bioengineering Division Award in Chemical Engineering. This national award recognizes an individual’s outstanding chemical engineering contribution in the food, pharmaceutical, and/or bioengineering field, which are of fundamental nature or of practical significance to industry and industrial practice.

Dordick, the Howard P. Isermann Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, is being honored for “his fundamental advances in drug discovery, bioengineered materials, functional nanocomposites, and biocatalysis that have spawned new technological applications.” He will receive the award at the AIChE Annual Meeting, Nov. 8-13, in Salt Lake City.

“We are very proud of Jonathan Dordick’s research, which uses leading-edge nano- and biotechnologies to answer great threats to human health, such as antibiotic resistance in deadly bacteria,” said Rensselaer President Shirley Ann Jackson. “His laboratory brings together collaborators in fields as diverse as microbiology and materials science—and has contributed to our vision of Rensselaer as ‘The New Polytechnic,’ a great crossroads for talent across disciplines, enabled by the most advanced technologies, and focused on addressing global challenges.”

Dordick’s research group includes chemical engineers, bioengineers, materials scientists, biologists, chemists, and microbiologists all focused on gaining a quantitative understanding of biological principles and applying them to advance bioengineering, nanobiotechnology, drug discovery, and biomanufacturing. He has received numerous awards, including the 2007 Marvin J. Johnson Award and the 2007 Elmer Gaden Award, both of the American Chemical Society, the 2003 International Enzyme Engineering Award, the 1998 Iowa Section Award of the American Chemical Society, and an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1989.

He recently was named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). He was elected a fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2010, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2004, and a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 1996. He has published over 340 papers and is an inventor/co-inventor on nearly 40 patents and patent applications.

He cofounded several companies, including EnzyMed (now part of Albany Molecular Research), Solidus Biosciences, and The Paper Battery Company.

Dordick received his B.A. in biochemistry and chemistry from Brandeis University and his Ph.D. in biochemical engineering from MIT. Prior to joining Rensselaer, he held chemical engineering faculty appointments at the University of Iowa, where he also served as the associate director of the Center for Biocatalysis and Bioprocessing.