CHBE'S ROBERTSON EARNS ACS FELLOW STATUS

BY STEPHEN GREENWELL

Megan Robertson, Professor in the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has been named one of the 45 Fellows of the 2022 class of the American Chemical Society.

The fellows program began in 2009 as a way to recognize ACS members for outstanding achievements in and contributions to science, the profession, and the ACS itself.

Robertson has received other distinctions from ACS, including the Rubber Division Sparks-Thomas Award in 2018, and was a PMSE Young Investigator in 2017.

Robertson is the fifth professor from the University of Houston to receive ACS Fel- low status, and only the second from the Cullen College of Engineering. Richard C. Willson, Huffington-Woestemeyer Professor in the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, was named a Fellow in 2014.

SEE THE FULL LIST OF FELLOWS HERE: https://cen.acs.org/acs-news/programs/Announcing-2022-ACS-fellows/100/i27

Two professors from the Cullen College of Engineering have been honored with election to the Fellow grade of membership for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

The professors chosen for the 2022 class are Yashashree Kulkarni, Bill D. Cook Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Roberto Ballarini, Thomas and Laura Hsu Professor and Department Chairman of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

ASME confers the Fellow grade of membership on worthy candidates to “recognize outstanding engineering achievements and contributions to the engineering profession and to ASME”. An ASME Member has to have 10 or more years of active practice, at least 10 years of active corporate membership in ASME, and be nominated by at least two ASME members or fellows.

Only about 3,000 members of ASME are Fellows, out of a total membership of about 75,000.

“Being recognized by the scientific community is indeed an incredible honor and I am humbled by it”, said Kulkarni. “Of course, this would not have been possible without the support of my amazing students, colleagues, and collaborators.”

Kulkarni is currently the Bill D. Cook Professor of Mechanical Engineering. She joined the Cullen College of Engineering in 2009. In 2019, she was appointed as the Director of Research Computing for the Cullen College of Engineering. Prior to joining the University of Houston, she was a post-doctoral scholar at University of California at San Diego. She earned her Bachelors’ degree from Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, India and her PhD in Applied Mechanics from California Institute of Technology.

Kulkarni currently serves as an Associate Editor for the ASME Journal of Applied Mechanics. She was the recipient of the ASME's Sia Nemat-Nasser Early Career Award in 2017.

Ballarini expressed gratitude for the Fellow designation, and similar to when he earned ASCE Distinguished Member Status, he was quick to thank his colleagues.

“I am honored to receive this recognition from the ASME,” he said. “It reflects, more than anything, the contributions of my students to the fields of mechanics, mechanical engineering, and materials science.”

Ballarini joined the Cullen College of Engineering as Department Chairman in the Fall of 2014. He previously served as James L. Record Professor and Head of the Department of Civil Engineering at University of Minnesota, Leonard Case Professor of Engineering at Case Western Reserve University, and F.W. Olin Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering.

Ballarini is a Past-President of the ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) and currently serves as Editor of the ASCE Journal of Engineering Mechanics.

In 2019, EMI awarded him the Raymond D. Mindlin Medal, “For the application of elasticity and fracture mechanics to problems in numerous disciplines and at multiple length scales, and for seminal contributions to experiments for measuring the mechanical properties of materials and structures at the micro- and nano-scales.” The medal is named after the Columbia University professor, who is considered a giant of 20th Century mechanics (and coincidentally was Ballarini’s “academic great-grandfather”).

Robertson has received this distinction due to her innovations in polymer sustainability, including developing polymers from renewable resources, exploring structure-property relationships of biobased polymers, probing polymer degradation behaviors, enhancing polymer recycling, and increasing material lifetimes. Additionally, she is recognized for her leadership in the Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering (PMSE) Division of ACS, of which she is currently the Vice Chair and Program Chair.

“It is an incredible honor to be recognized as an ACS Fellow, and I greatly appreciate the support from and interactions with scientists in the ACS community that have continued throughout my career,” Robertson said.

Robertson joined the faculty in 2010, following two years as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Minnesota. Prior to that, she worked as a senior scientist for Rohm and Haas, now Dow Chemical, and earned her Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley and her B.S. degree from Washington University in St. Louis.