(128a) Professor L.-S. Fan’s Career and Legacy As a Researcher, Educator, and Mentor

It is not hyperbole to assert that Prof. Fan is one of the intellectual leaders of Chemical Engineering. He is undoubtedly one of the most celebrated and respected Chemical Engineers in the world. He is a member of the NAE, six foreign academies, and the National Academy of Inventors. He was also chosen by the AIChE as one of the “One Hundred Chemical Engineers of the Modern Era.” We believe that his impact on sustainable energy has been far beyond any other academic researchers of recent years.

More importantly, Prof. Fan is an amazing teacher and mentor. He truly enjoys teaching and mentoring, and takes a great pride in his profession as a teacher. He spends amazing efforts in preparing, refining and updating lectures even for courses that he has taught for many years. He continues to reinvent his courses and introduce new teaching modules and tools to provide better learning experiences for all his students. Undergraduate and graduate students and faculty have recognized his outstanding teaching ability and pedagogical skills and have honored him with a number of Department, College and University distinguished teaching awards. His over four decades of tremendous educational impacts have been propagated throughout our Chemical Engineering profession. With his devoted effortseducating and mentoring young faculty and students with different challenges, the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) in Chemical Engineering has been greatly improved.

Prof. Fan has influenced a number of areas in Chemical Engineering research and education including sustainable energy and particle technology. Prof. Fan’s redox chemical looping reaction can produce syngas, methanol, H₂, and liquid fuels from various carbonaceous feedstock, while achieving CO₂ neutrality or even carbon negativity. For a century, industries believed it was impossible to synthesize metal oxide oxygen carriers with sustainable redox properties for any meaningful commercial applications. Prof. Fan’s breakthrough revealed the critical metal oxide redox mechanism underlining the ionic migration and hence its control, leading to robust redox particle formulation and synthesis which has entirely changed that perception making a dream is now reality. His metal oxide oxygen carriers have been tested for over 10,000 redox cycles and operated beyond the ‘Holy Grail’ of particle formulations.

Now, for the first time, the classical chemical reactions used over the past 50 years, i.e., autothermal and steam methane reforming processes, can be replaced. The impact of his chemical looping technology is tremendous. Professor Fan’s remarkable innovations in chemical looping are just one important facet of his prolific scholarly legacy, and it will serve as one of the foundations for our future Chemical Engineering education. Thus, it is a great honor to celebrate Prof. L.-S. Fan’s career and legacy as a researcher, educator, and mentor with the 2022 AIChE Warren K. Lewis Award for Chemical Engineering Education.