Troy, N.Y. - Georges Belfort has been named a chaired professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Belfort will hold the title of Russell Sage Professor of Chemical Engineering.

Belfort has been a chemical engineering faculty member for 25 years. He is a world-renowned authority on bioseparation, the science of recovering valuable proteins and other biological molecules from the complex mixtures in which they are produced. He's also an expert on the behavior of biological molecules at solid interfaces.

Belfort earned his Ph.D. in 1972 and an M.S. in 1969, both in engineering, from the University of California at Irvine. He received his B.S. in chemical engineering in 1963 from the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Among his many awards, Belfort earned the American Chemical Society Award and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Award in Separation Science and Technology in 1995 and 2000, respectively. He was elected a fellow of the American Institute for Medical & Biological Engineering in 1994. He is co-founder and former president of the North American Membrane Society. He has twice been a fellow of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science.

Several of his former students are currently on the faculty of other universities, including the University of Maryland, Princeton University, Ecole Normale Superieure (France), Hanyang University (Korea), University of Oveido (Spain), University of Sheffield (UK), Institut Technologg Bandung (Indonesia), and Universität Essen (Germany). His former students also have won National Science Foundation career awards and the prestigious NATO Graduate Scholarship.

Belfort is editor or coeditor of three books and has written more than 140 published reviewed papers and book chapters. He holds five patents (with others), including one for producing low-protein adhesive surfaces, and one for a new filter design that self-cleans during filtration.

Belfort is a consultant to industry in the United States, Europe, and Japan. His research has been supported by governments and companies in those countries. He serves on the editorial board of several international journals and is the international editor of the Chemical Engineering Journal of Japan.

The Russell Sage chaired professorship at Rensselaer was established in 1938. It was originally endowed by Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage in memory of her husband, Russell Sage, who served for 10 years as a Rensselaer trustee.

Contact: Jodi Ackerman
Phone: (518) 276-6531
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