The Satinder Ahuja Award for Young Investigators in Separation Science

Xiao Su is the 2024 recipient of the ACS Analytical Division Satinder Ahuja Award for Young Investigators in Separation Science. This award recognizes and encourages outstanding contributions to the field of separation science by a young chemist or chemical engineer from academia, industry, or national laboratories. It is presented each year at Pittcon. Xiao Su earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2017 and then held a postdoctoral position at the same institution in 2018. He joined the faculty of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in January 2019. His research program focuses on molecular engineering for advanced separations and process intensification, with applications focused on the recovery of rare-earth elements (REEs) and platinum group metals (PGMs), environmental remediation, and sustainable chemical manufacturing. Since joining Illinois, Xiao has been the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award (2019), the ACS Victor K. Lamer Award (2020), the ISE-Elsevier Prize for Green Electrochemistry (2021), the ACS Unilever Award (2023), and the AIChE FRI/John G. Kunesh Award (2023). In addition to Professor Su, speakers in the session are planned to include Professor Shelley Minteer (Missouri S&T), Professor Robert Hillman (University of Leicester), Professor Robbyn Anand (Iowa State University), and Professor Jared Anderson (Iowa State University).