Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering faculty member Brent Shanks has been named an American Chemical Society (ACS) Industrial & Engineering Chemistry (I&EC) Fellow for the Class of 2023.

Shanks is Anson Marston Distinguished Professor in Engineering, Mike and Jean Steffenson Faculty Chair, and Director of the Iowa State University-based Center for Biorenewable Chemicals (CBiRC).

The I&EC Division Fellow award is presented to a chemist or engineer selected from an academic, industrial, or government laboratory based on innovative contributions to the areas in which they have published within applied chemistry and/or chemical engineering. Patents are given equal weight to papers in the open literature and nominations from industry are encouraged.

Fellow awardees are announced on the I&EC Division’s website and the award presentation is made at the organization’s spring meeting.

Shanks established CBiRC in 2008 and has served as its director since then. He is co-founder of Pyrone Systems, Inc., which is commercializing pyrone technology developed in CBiRC. He serves on the Board of Directors for AgCertain Industries, Inc.

After receiving his B.S. degree from Iowa State University’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering in 1983, he received his Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology in 1988. From 1988 to 1999 he worked as a research engineer and department manager in the Catalyst Department at the Shell Chemical Company technology center in Houston, Texas.

He joined the faculty at Iowa State University in 1999, where his group’s research has primarily involved reaction systems for efficiently converting plant-based feedstocks to chemicals.

Learn more about the I&EC Division and its Fellow Awards.