Chemical and Biological Engineering

This distinguished lectureship honors the memory of Richard H. Wilhelm, a graduate of Columbia University who spent his entire professional career at Princeton University. He joined the Department of Chemical Engineering in 1934 and served as chairman from 1954 until his death in 1968. In recognition of his distinguished teaching, he was named Henry Putnam University Professor by Princeton University and given the Warren K. Lewis Award in Chemical Engineering Education by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

For his research leadership in numerous areas of chemical reaction engineering, he received from the AIChE the William H. Walker Award in 1951 and the Professional Progress Award in 1952 and the Award in Industrial and Engineering Chemistry from the American Chemical Society in 1966. In 1968 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, the highest professional distinction that can be conferred upon an American engineer.

In 1973, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers established the R.H. Wilhelm Award in Chemical Reaction Engineering, presented each year to an individual in recognition of significant and new contributions in the field. The Richard H. Wilhelm Lectureship was established through the generosity of his colleagues, friends, and students.

Klavs F. Jensen is Warren K. Lewis Professor and Head of the Chemical Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his chemical engineering education from the Technical University of Denmark (M.Sc.) and University of Wisconsin-Madison (Ph.D.). His research interests revolve around microfabrication, testing, and integration of microsystems for chemical and biological discovery, synthesis and processing. Catalysis, chemical kinetics and transport phenomena related to processing of materials for biomedical, electronic, energy conversion, and optical applications are also topics of interest along with development of simulation approaches for reactive chemical and biological systems, specifically simulation across multiple length and time scales. He is the co-author of more than 300 journal articles as well as several edited volumes and 25 U.S. patents. He serves on advisory boards to universities, companies, professional societies, and governments. He is the recipient of several awards, including a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Allan P. Colburn, Charles M.A. Stine, R.H. Wilhelm, and W.H. Walker Awards of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Professor Jensen is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Science. He is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and the Royal Society of Chemistry.