Chemical engineer earns honors as top innovator

Chemical engineer earns honors as top innovator

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News staff

Rice chemical engineer Michael Wong has been named to the 2006 list of the world’s 35 Top Young Innovators by Technology Review magazine.

The annual TR35 list recognizes individuals under age 35 whose innovative research in technology has a profound impact on today’s world. Nominees are recognized for their contributions in transforming the nature of technology and business in industries such as biotechnology and medicine, computing and nanotechnology.

WONG

“In just five years at Rice, Michael Wong has built a growing reputation as one of the most innovative creators of unique and useful nanomaterials,” said Rice President David Leebron. “He is extending the traditional boundaries of chemical engineering, materials science and chemistry, and he is very deserving of this honor.”

Wong, assistant professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering and in chemistry, has used nanoparticles to develop innovative new catalysts for the chemical industry, a new class of microcapsules for biomedical applications and palladium-coated gold nanoparticles for the purification of water contaminated by chlorinated compounds. His group is also making advances in understanding nanoparticle synthesis and scale-up.

In the area of catalysis, for example, Wong has found ways to incorporate nanoparticle-supported metal oxides into new catalysts for the chemical industry, which spends more than $11 billion annually on catalysts. Wong’s catalysts, which make use of nanoparticles rather than microparticles, could allow industry to reduce energy costs and waste chemicals and to more efficiently produce gasoline, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. His catalysts could also be used in more efficient smog-reduction devices and in the new chemical technologies, like those needed to produce hydrogen.

In a separate area of research, Wong has discovered a fundamentally new approach for synthesizing microcapsules by mixing together a polymer-salt solution and a nanoparticle suspension. This room-temperature, mild-pH, spontaneous self-assembly process has been used to create microcapsules that can be used in drug delivery, improved medical diagnostics and other biomedical applications.

TR35 award winners are selected by Technology Review’s editors and a panel of independent judges from major institutions and corporations such as Boston University, Hewlett-Packard Labs, the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Caltech and Applied Materials.

“The TR35 is an amazing group of people,” said Jason Pontin, editor in chief of Technology Review. “Their accomplishments are likely to shape their fields for decades to come. It’s evident when you scroll back and see names like Sergey Brin, Jonathan Ive and Steve Jurvetson among the past winners.”

More information about past and present TR35 winners and judges is available at <www.technologyreview.com/TR35/>.