AIChE's Institute 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 2026 recipient of the award is Dr. Ruilan Guo of the University of Notre Dame.
She is being recognized “for discovering and advancing gas separation membranes that surpass permeability-selectivity tradeoffs, resist plasticization and aging, and enable high-temperature industrial gas separations.”
About Guo and her work
Guo is Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. She received her B.E. and M.E. degrees in Materials Science & Engineering from Beijing University of Chemical Technology and completed her Ph.D. in the School of Polymer, Textile and Fiber Engineering at Georgia Tech. She was a postdoctoral fellow working with the late Prof. James E. McGrath at Virginia Tech before joining Notre Dame in 2012.
Guo is an internationally recognized leader in industrial membrane gas separation technologies, with more than years of pioneering contributions. Her research focuses on the development of functional polymer membranes for gas and chemical separations in emerging energy and environmental applications. Her work has transformed the rational design of polymer membranes for critical applications, including CO2 removal from natural gas, high-temperature H2/CO2 separations (pre-combustion carbon capture), hydrogen purification from light hydrocarbons, and emerging separations of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerant mixtures.
Guo is the Deputy co-Director of an NSF Engineering Research Center (CISTAR). Currently, she serves as an editor for the journal Polymer (Elsevier) and is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Industrial Chemistry & Materials. Her achievements have been recognized by many prestigious awards including the U.S. Department of Energy CAREER Award, the inaugural Class of Influential Researchers by I&EC Research), MSDE Emerging Investigators, and AIChE's FRI/Neil Yeoman Innovation Award in 2023.
