Lively Wins AIChE’s 2020 Colburn Prize

Associate Professor Ryan P. Lively is the 2020 winner of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ (AIChE) Allan P. Colburn Award for Excellence in Publications by a Young Member of the Institute.

Each year, the award recognizes outstanding progress in the field of chemical engineering by one researcher in any area of chemical engineering research who is within 12 years of completing their PhD.

One of the most prestigious awards an early career chemical engineer can receive, the Colburn award recognizes significant advances and contributions to the field of chemical engineering.

Lively was honored for his broad contributions to separations science. He has worked to improve adsorptionbased gas separations and has led the experimental and conceptual development of organic solvent reverse osmosis separations.

“Ryan’s work is making a real difference to world-scale problems faced by the chemical process industry. This award is a wonderful recognition of his impressive achievements," says Professor David Sholl, the John F. Brock III School Chair of ChBE.

Innovations in Lively’s work span discovery of new materials, fundamental understanding of adsorption and mass-transfer mechanisms, and development of practical separation systems, including advances in materials manufacturing.

He has also served the chemical engineering community through his service as a board member on the North American Membrane Society, and as an associate editor of Chemical Engineering Science and an editor at the Journal of Membrane Science.

Lively joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2013. In the last seven years, his research team has produced over 90 papers that have been cited more than 5,000 times according to Google Scholar.

Sholl notes that Lively is a “Georgia Tech triple threat,” holding undergraduate and PhD degrees from ChBE and now a faculty position here. He is the John H. Woody Faculty Fellow.