William A. Phillip, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Notre Dame, has been named to the 2015 Class of DuPont Young Professors, one of only nine young faculty to receive the honor this year. The DuPont Young Professors grant program supports young researchers engaged in highly original research across a variety of fields, including nanotechnology, carbon dioxide capture, genomics, DNA sequencing, system biology and the synthesis of natural products, herbicides and enzymes. Since 1968, the program has recognized and provided over $50 million in funding to more than 700 young professors across 140 institutions in 19 countries.
Phillip leads the Water purification and Advanced Transport Engineering Research (WATER) laboratory at Notre Dame, where he studies the ways in which structure and chemistry affect the transport of solutes and solvents across polymeric membranes. By understanding the fundamental connection between functionality and property, he and his team hope to gain information to be able to design and fabricate next-generation membranes from advanced materials to provide more precise control over mass transfer and enhance chemical separation at the water-energy nexus. This is the research he will be pursuing during the three-year award period and will present, as part of a research seminar, to the DuPont research community.
In addition to the DuPont Young Professor Award, Phillip has received the 2014 North American Membrane Society (NAMS) Young Membrane Scientist Award, a Young Investigator Program grant from the Army Research Office, the 3M Nontenured Faculty Award from the 3M Corporation and is a coauthor of a Top Cited Paper for 2010 and 2011 from the Journal of Membrane Science.
A member of NAMS, the American Chemical Society, American Institute of Chemical Engineers and American Physical Society, Phillip has also published several high-profile papers in Science, ACS Nano, Nano Letters, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and other prestigious journals.
A 2004 graduate of the University, Phillip received his doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in 2009. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University, he joined the University in 2011.