Two Top Scientists to Join Chemical Engineering Department Faculty

Ranil Wickramasinghe, an authority in the fields of sustainable bioenergy and purification of pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical products, has been named one of the first two Arkansas Research Alliance Scholars, and will join the faculty at the University of Arkansas as the Ross E. Martin Chair in Emerging Technologies in the Ralph E. Martin department of chemical engineering in the College of Engineering

The Arkansas Research Alliance is a public-private partnership funded by the state and committed to strengthening the economic competitiveness of Arkansas by increasing university-based research and innovation in designated fields. The alliance created the Scholars Program to help universities recruit faculty whose job-creating research can help promote economic progress in the state.

The Alliance invited Arkansas research universities to nominate professors for the Scholars Program and Wickramasinghe was nominated by the University of Arkansas. The university is receiving a $500,000 grant from the Research Alliance to contribute to his salary and to develop his research for three years.

"We are very pleased the ARA selected Dr. Wickramasinghe as one of their first scholars," said Sharon Gaber, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs. "His research will have a long range impact on the state economy, helping to stimulate new knowledge and industry in the state and bringing in more high paying jobs. At the same time, our students will benefit from the experience of learning from him in the classroom and in the lab.

Ranil Wickramasinghe is currently a professor at Colorado State University in the department of chemical and biological engineering, and has also served as a distinguished guest professor at Qingdao University in China. He has a doctoral degree in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota.

Wickramasinghe's wife, Xianghong Qian, has also been hired by the university to hold the Robert E. Babcock Sr. Professorship in Chemical Engineering. Qian is an expert in computational chemistry with application to converting biomass to biofuels, finding ways to improve water purification and studying the proteins related to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. She is assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Colorado State University, has a doctoral degree in chemistry from George Washington University and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics. Qian also worked as a research scientist at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colo.

"Xianghong Qian will be another outstanding addition to the University of Arkansas faculty," said Gaber. "The College of Engineering and the chemical engineering department did excellent work identifying such top quality scientists and convincing them to come to Arkansas. Of course the state support, through the ARA, made a significant difference. This is an example of the state, university and colleges working together to help grow the state economy while building a world-class faculty at the University of Arkansas."

Wickramasinghe and Qian will join the university faculty effective Jan. 1, 2011.