8/26/2012 Contact: Steve Granick, Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, 217/333-5720. Photo: L. Brian Stauffer. If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, editor, Engineering Communications Office
Written by Contact: Steve Granick, Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, 217/333-5720. Photo: L. Brian Stauffer. If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, editor, Engineering Communications Office
Steve Granick, a Founder Professor of Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MatSE), has been recognized as the 2013 recipient of the Colloid and Surface Chemistry Award of the American Chemical Society, the highest honor in colloid science in the United States.
Granick, who is also a professor of chemistry, of physics, of biophysics, and of chemical and biomolecular engineering, specializes in the field of soft materials--fluid membranes, liposomes, polymers, colloids, and other structured liquids, and presently focuses on their behavior at surfaces. He is also an affiliate faculty member in the 3D Micro and Nanosystems group at the Beckman Institute.
The Granick Research Group has a multidisciplinary membership and addresses a wide variety of scientific problems, but its methods, solutions, and even its mission often have the element of simplicity. For example, a 2011 Nature paper from the group reported on the development of a new class of complex, self-assembling materials called Janus spheres that were described by Granick as “a big step forward in showing how to make non-trivial, non-obvious structures from a very simple thing.”
Granick joined the Illinois faculty in 1985 following postdoctoral research at the Collège de France and at the University of Minnesota. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), and, in 2009, he received the APS Polymer Physics Prize.
The ACS Colloid and Surface Chemistry Award is awarded annually to recognize outstanding accomplishment and excellence of contributions in colloid and surface chemistry research. The award, sponsored by Procter & Gamble Co, recognizes and encourages outstanding scientific contributions to colloid and/or surface chemistry in North America.