Maciej Radosz

UW Chemical Engineering Professor Among Most Cited Authors

September 17, 2007 - A University of Wyoming chemical engineering professor’s published works are among the profession’s most cited articles, according to a leading national journal.

Maciej Radosz, who has been at UW since 2000, is honored by the Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research (IECR), American Chemical Society’s premier journal for applied chemistry and chemical engineering. The publication is celebrating its 100th anniversary by honoring the 100 most cited articles among the 16,641 IECR articles published since 1975.

Radosz co-wrote three highly cited articles, according to the IECR. Radosz and his colleagues wrote the seminal papers documenting “Statistical Associating Fluid Theory" (SAFT), a benchmark soft-matter model used by academic and commercial groups throughout the world to design fossil-energy, chemical, and polymeric materials and processes.

“I am grateful to my collaborators who co-wrote the most cited IECR papers,” Radosz says. He and his colleagues will be honored at an IECR 100th-anniversary symposium next fall in Philadelphia.

He wrote the fourth and 12th most cited papers with Stanley H. Huang, then a postdoctoral associate at ExxonMobil's Physical Sciences Laboratory in New Jersey and now a senior engineering professional with Chevron Energy Technology Company in Texas. Their work explored creative molecular approximations that allowed for crucial engineering applications to real fluids, fluid mixtures and soft materials.

Radosz’s other cited paper, number six on the list, was written with the Cornell University group of Professor Keith E. Gubbins, now W.H. Clark Distinguished University Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University, his Ph.D. student Walter G. Chapman, now the William W. Akers Professor of Chemical Engineering at Rice University, and his postdoctoral associate George Jackson, now professor of chemical physics in the Chemical Engineering Department at Imperial College. The collaborators verified and advanced Wertheim’s theory of associating molecules that underpins the SAFT ideas.

Radosz founded UW’s Soft Materials Laboratory (SML) with Youqing Shen, Hertanto Adidharma, Morris Argyle, Patrick Johnson and others. They are a multidisciplinary research team dedicated to understanding bionanomaterials for drug and gene delivery, carbon capture, catalysis, fossil energy and other applications, Radosz says.

Radosz has co-written more than 175 research papers published in archival journals that have been cited more than 2,500 times. He has more than 20 patents or patentable inventions.

He spent 15 years with ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company in New Jersey working on fossil energy, molecular separations and polymeric materials technology.

Before joining UW as professor and department head of chemical and petroleum engineering, he was M. F. Gautreaux and Ethyl Corporation Endowed Chair of chemical engineering and adjunct professor of chemistry at Louisiana State University. Radosz also was a Rutgers University visiting professor of chemical and biochemical engineering, distinguished lecturer for the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and postdoctoral fellow at Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Purdue University.