Bhattacharyya Receives UK Alumni Professorship Award

The University of Kentucky Alumni Association — with a committee chaired by UK Associate Provost for Faculty Advancement G.T. Lineberry — regularly honors outstanding UK faculty members with the UK Alumni Professorship Award. This year, one of the honors went to Dibakar Bhattacharyya, University Alumni Professor of Chemical Engineering.

“Successful universities are built on a foundation of great teaching,” said Tim Walsh, associate vice president for alumni relations and executive director of the UK Alumni Association. “Through Alumni Professorships, the UK Alumni Association is pleased to support faculty who have been recognized for their influential scholarly contributions, sustained excellence in teaching, and outstanding service.  

“Many successful alumni attribute success in their career endeavors to the influence of faculty members during their college years,” said Walsh. “The Alumni Professorship program is one way for the UK Alumni Association to say thank you to the faculty members who have enriched the lives of our alumni.”

Created at least 33 years ago — no one seems able to calculate beyond this approximation — the award recognized faculty for their “influential scholarly contributions, sustained excellence in teaching, and outstanding career or public service.”

 As each spring semester draws to a close, academic deans are asked to make nominations based on the following criteria:

• The individual should be a tenured faculty member (at the rank of associate professor or professor);
• The individual should have made outstanding contributions in research and scholarship that are recognized nationally for their quality and influence;
• The individual should have established a reputation for being an excellent teacher and mentor; and
• The individual should be recognized for outstanding contributions to professional and/or community service.

Bhattacharyya focuses his research on tunable membranes and biocatalysis, and water treatment. As the director of the UK Center of Membrane Sciences, Bhattacharyya is renowned for his research on membranes for filtering and producing clean water. He has given invited lectures on all continents, save Antarctica. Recently, Bhattacharyya led membrane studies for the National Science Foundation’s EPSCoR, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the NSF EAGER program and industry.  Through Australian Research Council funding, he and his students are making advanced graphene oxide membranes with Monash University.  In 2017, Bhattacharyya celebrated 50 years of prolific research at UK.