Message from the Chair

Greetings From Ohio State!

On July 1, 2019 I assumed the chairship of the department as Professor Palmer resumed his teaching and research program, which is of increasing interest to a number of federal organizations.

In my new role as department chair, there are a lot of challenges, but also a lot of opportunities, and I am very excited about the future of our department.

In August 2019, we welcomed new faculty member Joel Paulson. At a time when fierce competition for chemical engineering faculty and a tight funding environment have created enormous challenges in hiring the star-quality faculty we have come to expect at The Ohio State University, we are very fortunate to bring Dr. Paulson on board.

We are also thrilled that last January, William Xiaoguang Wang joined our faculty after working as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University with Professor Joanna Aizenberg on the design of functional materials based on stimuli-responsive soft matter.

Finally, we look forward to welcoming Xiaoxue Wang, currently a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who is working on applying machine learning in chemical synthesis. Dr. Wang joins our faculty in January 2020.

Faculty Expansion Plan

These hires represent the early stages of a plan to invest in our world-class faculty by engaging in an aggressive hiring campaign. 

The target for faculty net growth, anticipating several retirements, is to hire two to three new faculty/year for five years for a target net growth to 30 faculty.

This will be a challenge in our current funding scenario, but one that is not only well worth the effort, but critical to the long-term success of the program and our students. (Alumni, if you'd like to support the department, contributing to our faculty development fund is one way in which you can help!)

Best regards from Columbus, Ohio!

Umit S. Ozkan

Professor and Chair

 

Professor and Chair, Umit S. Ozkan

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