Troy, N.Y. —Industry Week has named Rensselaer professors Jonathan Dordick and Martin Glicksman to its list of research and development “Stars to Watch.” The magazine’s list of 30 researchers from around the country “celebrates the contributions of individuals who drive innovation and provide the initial spark to economic growth.”

“Drs. Dordick and Glicksman are world-class researchers,” said Rensselaer Provost G.P. “Bud” Peterson. “It is wonderful that they have been recognized for their cutting-edge research. This is well-deserved recognition of their ability to transfer fundamental research from the laboratory to practical application. Their discoveries benefit our students, the Institute, and beyond.”

Jonathan Dordick
Dordick is Rensselaer’s Howard P. Isermann Professor of Chemical Engineering and chair of that department. He and his colleagues have shown that enzymes, designed by nature to work best immersed in water, also can operate effectively dissolved in organic chemicals or in a high salt concentration. Dordick and his bioengineering team are now working to develop an active system of enzymes on a microchip—a “biochip”—that will determine the metabolic functions of genetic materials to help to interpret the human genome. Dordick and his team seek a full understanding of the processes that go on within living cells. They are modeling those processes in a unique laboratory, a tiny “cell on a chip.”

Martin Glicksman
Glicksman ’57 is Rensselaer’s John Tod Horton Professor of Materials Engineering. A world-renowned scientist, he developed the Rensselaer Isothermal Dendritic Growth Experiment (IDGE), featuring a series of microgravity crystal growth experiments that were successfully flown on space shuttle missions in 1994, 1996, and 1997. Applications of the IDGE results will help to improve productivity in the metals industry. Glicksman’s space experiments were the first to ever be conducted and controlled directly from a college campus-Rensselaer’s. In 2001, Glicksman received a Humboldt Senior Research Prize from Germany’s Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for his research in materials processing, including metals solidification, crystal growth of electronic materials, and microgravity science. He is a fellow of the Metallurgical Society, the American Society for Materials, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Contact: Megan Galbraith
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