AIChE’s Board of Directors has approved a new Institute Award that recognizes significant and new contributions to fundamental practice in chemical engineering. The L.-S. Fan Award for Advancing Fundamentals of Chemical Engineering is named for particle technology pioneer Liang-Shih Fan, Professor at The Ohio State Univ., and is supported by an endowment with fundraising led by Ah-Hyung “Alissa” Park (Univ. of California, Los Angeles) and Bing Du (ExxonMobil), in collaboration with the AIChE Foundation. The award includes an invited lecture by the recipient, with the first award slated for the 2026 AIChE Annual Meeting.
Alissa Park lauds Fan as “a seminal figure in the field of particulates and multiphase reaction engineering — a discipline whose economic and environmental impact resonates profoundly through the U.S. and world economies.” Reflecting on Fan’s leadership in sustainable energy research and his mentorship of future chemical engineers, Park adds, “I am honored to be a part of his legacy, and excited to present this new AIChE award recognizing the importance of the fundamentals of chemical engineering.”
A rockstar ChemE
Liang-Shih Fan is Distinguished University Professor, Easton Professor of Engineering, and Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Ohio State. He has invented processes that control sulfur, nitrogen oxide, and carbon dioxide emissions, and that convert carbonaceous fuels, plastic wastes, and biomass to hydrogen, chemicals, and liquid fuels. These energy conversion processes and technologies include OSCAR, CARBONOX, and redox chemical looping. He has documented his work in eight authored books, over 500 journal articles, 40 book chapters, and 90 U.S. patents.
Fan has also made a lasting impact on chemical engineering education. At Ohio State, he has served as the thesis advisor for 97 PhD students and he has worked with 72 post-doctoral research associates. His authored book, “Principles of Gas-Solid Flows,” has become a widely adopted textbook, and his edited book, “The Expanding World of Chemical Engineering,” has gained popularity as an introduction to the field. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Powder Technology, and has served as a consulting editorial board member for over 20 journals, including the AIChE Journal and the International Journal of Multiphase Flow.
A Fellow of AIChE, the American Chemical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Fan is also a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Inventors, among many international affiliations and honors. He earned his BS from National Taiwan Univ. and his MS and PhD from West Virginia Univ., all in chemical engineering. He also earned an MS in statistics from Kansas State Univ.
Nominate a candidate
Candidates for the L.-S. Fan Award should have a record of sustained contributions that have advanced the frontiers of chemical engineering with an emphasis on, but not limited to, particle science and technology and their related multiscale, multiphase, materials, transport, and reaction engineering fields. Such contributions may be characterized by important fundamental research, innovation, technological development, or the innovative application of technology.
Learn more about AIChE’s Institute Awards at www.aiche.org/institute.
This article originally appeared in Institute News in the June 2025 issue of CEP. Members have access online to complete issues, including a vast, searchable archive of back-issues found at www.aiche.org/cep.
