In this series, ChEnected introduces readers to the recipients of AIChE’s 2025 Institute and Board of Directors’ Awards. These high honorees are nominated by the chemical engineering community and voted upon by the members of AIChE’s Awards Committee.
AIChE's Award for Excellence in Industrial Gases Technology recognizes an individual’s sustained excellence in advancing technology in the production, distribution, or application of industrial gases. The recipient of the 2025 Institute Award for Excellence in Industrial Gases Technology is Haiqing Lin, Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.
Dr. Lin is being recognized “for pioneering advances in materials and membranes for post-combustion and pre-combustion carbon captures.”
About Haiqing Lin and his work
Haiqing Lin is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work on membrane materials for industrial gas separations. His research bridges polymer science and process engineering to design membranes that make CO₂ capture, hydrogen purification, and natural-gas upgrading more efficient and cost-effective.
Before joining the University at Buffalo in 2013, Lin spent eight years at Membrane Technology and Research (MTR), where he co-developed the Polaris™ membrane, a landmark polymer membrane for CO₂ capture from flue gas that remains a benchmark in the field. His work helped take membrane carbon-capture technology from the laboratory to pilot- and demonstration-scale plants across the United States.
At Buffalo, Lin has continued to push the boundaries of membrane design. His group has developed poly(ether oxide)-based polymers with record-setting CO₂ permeability and selectivity, hybrid materials that incorporate palladium nanoparticles and organosilica for hydrogen separations, and carbon molecular sieve membranes engineered for “blue hydrogen” production. His publications in Science, Nature Communications, and Advanced Materials are among the most cited in the membrane field, with several papers exceeding 1,000 citations.
Lin has also been a leading mentor and collaborator. His research group of 10–15 students and postdocs has become one of the top U.S. research groups in the industrial gas separation area. To date, he has authored over 150 papers and secured more than $18 million in research funding from the U.S. Department of Energy and other agencies.
Dr. Lin received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, his MS from North Carolina State University, and his BS and MS in Chemical Engineering from Xiamen University in China. He is a Senior Member of AIChE and a member of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the North American Membrane Society (NAMS), where he served on the Board of Directors from 2020 to 2023.
This fall, ChEnected is presenting a series that profiles all the 2025 Institute and Board of Directors’ Award recipients. Visit ChEnected regularly to meet the honorees.
