Lin named chair of chemical engineering

February 08, 2008

Jerry Y.S. Lin has been named chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering in ASU’s Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering.<separator></separator>He takes over a department with plans in place to add to its faculty and improve its academic rankings.<separator></separator>Lin has been interim chair of the department since July 2006.<separator></separator>“I’m optimistic about the future,” he says. “We have top-quality faculty who are devoted to excellence in education and who are working on cutting-edge research.”<separator></separator>The department has hired several new faculty members in the past several years and seen its graduate program improve in the U.S. News and World Report magazine rankings from No. 50 to No. 44 in the nation.<separator></separator>Lin says he expects the undergraduate and graduate chemical engineering programs to earn improved rankings in the coming years.<separator></separator>“Professor Lin is an excellent researcher and technical leader,” says Deirdre Meldrum, dean of the school of engineering. “We’re excited to have him on our leadership team. The chemical engineering department will play a pivotal role in our efforts to educate the engineers of the future.”<separator></separator>Before coming to ASU in January 2005, Lin was a professor of chemical engineering and co-director of the National Science Foundation Center for Membrane Applied Science and Technology at University of Cincinnati.<separator></separator>He earned his doctorate in 1988 from Worcester Polytechnic Institute after receiving a bachelor’s degree from Zhejiang University in China and a master’s degree from Worcester Polytechnic. He was a post-doctoral staff member at the University of Twente in the Netherlands from 1988 to 1991.<separator></separator>Lin, who has more than 160 articles published in science and engineering journals, holds four patents in synthesis of new inorganic membranes and adsorbents, and in the processes using these materials.<separator></separator>His articles frequently have been cited in the chemical engineering field, and he has been invited to present 120 lectures to audiences of academics and industrialists.<separator></separator>He has won several prestigious awards, including a National Science Foundation Career Award (1995), Sigma Xi Young Investigator Award (1998), Cheung Kong Scholar (2001), the University of Cincinnati College of Engineering Research Award (2002), the BP Faculty Excellence Award (2002) and a Chinese National Science Foundation Award for Collaboration (2003). He was the conference chairman of the Eighth International Conference on Inorganic Membranes (2004).<separator></separator>Lin has served as a reviewer or judge for more than 40 journals and 20 research funding agencies. He is on the editorial boards of several journals, including the Journal of Membrane Science and Chinese Science Bulletin.

Engineering Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering