Brad Chmelka

Brad Chmelka received his PhD in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1990 under the supervision of Prof. Clayton Radke and Prof. Eugene Petersen. Prior to graduate studies, he was a plant-start up engineer for two years with Unocal’s Oil Shale Operations in Colorado (U.S.), after receiving his Bachelors of Science degree in chemical engineering from Arizona State University. Following receipt of his PhD, he conducted post-doctoral research at the University of California-Berkeley with Prof. Alexander Pines and at the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany with Prof. Hans Spiess.

Prof. Chmelka joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at UCSB in 1992 and is currently Distinguished Professor. He is a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering. His research has been recognized by the 2016 Braskem Award from the Materials Science and Engineering Division of American Institute of Chemical Engineers, a David and Lucile Packard Foundation Award, a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Award. He serves on several industrial and academic advisory boards and holds an honorary doctorate degree from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. He has been an invited professor at universities in Sweden, France, Spain, Israel, and Switzerland. Since 2015, he has served as Co-Director of the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, a federally supported university affiliated research center involving research groups at UCSB, MIT, and Caltech. He has authored over 170 technical publications and holds 10 issued patents.