A leading researcher in catalytic science with a profound interest in teaching and a keen sense of tradition, Mark A. Barteau, Robert L. Pigford Chair and chairperson of the Department of Chemical Engineering, has been named the 2004 winner of the Francis Alison Award, the University’s highest faculty honor.

The University’s Board of Trustees established the award in 1978 to recognize the scholarship, professional achievements and dedication of the UD faculty.

UD President David P. Roselle announced the selection, saying, “It is in all ways appropriate that Mark Barteau be recognized with the Alison Award. He is long-term member of the faculty and a respected teacher and administrator. Respect for his scholarship is widespread among chemical engineers worldwide, and he is an excellent candidate to receive many additional awards and recognitions in the future.”

“Mark Barteau is one of the most important chemical engineers in the country today,” Eric Kaler, dean of the College of Engineering, added. “His superb scientific record has been recognized by many awards, and his service to advisory and policy groups has been at the highest level. When those strengths are combined with the results of the gifted leadership he has displayed as chair of our chemical engineering department, I can’t imagine a colleague more representative of the ideals Francis Alison held for the University of Delaware.”

“I was thrilled to learn that I had been named a recipient of the Francis Alison Award,” Barteau said. “A number of previous winners have been professors in our department, including Robert Pigford, whose name is on the professorship I hold, Arthur B. Metzner, T.W. Fraser Russell and Stanley I. Sandler. They were the leaders when I joined the Department of Chemical Engineering 22 years ago. and I am honored to be included among them. As well, it is gratifying to be a part of the broader community of Francis Alison professors at the University of Delaware, which is quite a distinguished group.”

Barteau, a native of St. Louis who earned his bachelor’s degree from Washington University and both his master’s and doctoral degrees from Stanford University, said he came to UD because of the strength of the chemical engineering department and the creation of the Center for Catalytic Science and Technology, which conducts research in his area of interest. He was named director of the center in 1996 and four years later was named department chairperson.

The position is both challenging and exciting, Barteau said, because “a certain visibility” is attached to the chairperson of one of the top 10 chemical engineering programs in the United States.

As chairperson, Barteau has had an opportunity to lead a major change in faculty over a relatively short period, having overseen eight new hires. “We want faculty who are well-grounded in science and engineering, and who can remain at the forefront of the field as it evolves,” he said. “My hope is that they will continue the tradition of excellence while leading the department into new research areas and new teaching methods,” he said.

One clear direction for the future is the growth of research in the biological sciences and biotechnology as part of the field of chemical engineering. “We have hired faculty in those areas and have added an undergraduate minor in biochemical engineering,” Barteau said. “We’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting to integrate bioscience into chemical engineering.”

A second direction will be in the field of energy. “The grand challenge for Western civilization for the next 50 years will be energy and the environmental issues related to it,” Barteau said.

UD’s chemical engineering department is special, he said, because of “the caliber of the people, a shared sense of purpose that is ingrained in the department, the tradition of excellence and the commitment to teaching at all levels.”

The department often teams younger faculty with senior professors, who serve as mentors. It also seeks out top graduate students who are identified as faculty-caliber and prepares them for teaching positions. UD typically has four to five graduates joining the faculty of other institutions every year, Barteau said. “We have loyal alumni working in other institutions who often send top students back to us,” he said, adding, “That’s how you win.”

Furthermore, senior faculty members lend their support on a variety of levels, with Barteau citing the recent presentation of a gift by Russell to support teaching fellowships.

The result is an outstanding foundation for all students, and particularly graduate students. Barteau said UD is a “top five producer” of chemical engineering doctorates, with up to two dozen per year, and has one of the nation’s highest success rates among minority Ph.D. candidates.

Barteau attributes that to the individualized attention given to students, who report not to postdoctoral staff but to faculty. “I don’t get a sense from our students that they feel they have come out of a factory,” he said.

“All of our faculty members will go the extra mile for students,” he said. “I have an open-door policy. If my door is open, I’m fair game. By the same token, we expect students to show a certain level of responsibility.”

Barteau said his own teaching style is more of a classical approach, stemming from his days at a Benedictine high school where he studied Greek and Latin and earned a scholarship in history. He turned to chemical engineering because “it was the best synthesis of my interests in math, science and engineering.” He said he is particularly pleased to receive the Francis Alison Award because the Rev. Alison was revered as one of the leading classical scholars in the Colonies.

Barteau joined the UD faculty as an assistant professor of chemical engineering and associate director of the Center for Catalytic Science and Technology in 1982, after an NSF postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Munich. He was promoted to associate professor in 1987, professor in 1990 and named professor in 1994. He became director of the center in 1996.

From 1991-92, he was visiting professor of chemical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and also was a visiting professor of chemistry at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1997.

His research, presented in more than 200 publications and a similar number of invited lectures, focuses on chemical reactions at solid surfaces, and their applications in heterogeneous catalysis. He was one of the pioneers in demonstrating the application of surface spectroscopies to study the mechanisms of organic reactions on single crystal metal oxide surfaces, and such studies remain an important component of his research today. In addition, he and his students have recently brought to bear computational chemistry approaches, in combination with experiments, to identify several previously unknown catalytic reaction intermediates in commercially important processes for manufacture of epoxides.

Barteau is pursuing several innovative approaches to the formation of model catalytic materials, including self-assembly of inorganic monolayers and photochemical synthesis of supported metal nanoparticles, as well as atomic and molecular resolution imaging of these materials using scanning probe microscopes.

There is also a significant applications thrust to his work, Barteau said, and he and his students have demonstrated a number “firsts” in catalysis by metal oxides, including the first example of oxide-catalyzed cyclization of acetylenes to form substituted aromatic molecules, the first heterogeneously catalyzed reductive coupling of carbonyl compounds and a new oxide-catalyzed process for the environmentally benign synthesis of ketenes.

These highly reactive molecules are used in a variety of chemical, pharmaceutical and paper applications.

Barteau and his co-workers hold two patents on the ketene technology, assigned to the University of Delaware, and additional applications are pending.

Barteau is the recipient of numerous awards, some of which include inaugural recipient in 2000 of the International Catalysis Award, presented by the International Association of Catalysis Societies; the 1995 Ipatieff Prize from the American Chemical Society; the Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis, given by the North American Catalysis Society; the 1993 Canadian Catalysis Lecture Tour Award; and the 1991 Allan P. Colburn Award and 2001 Alpha Chi Sigma Award, presented by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

He has held NSF postdoctoral and graduate fellowships, a Langsdorf Engineering Fellowship and a National Merit Scholarship.

During his tenure at UD, Barteau has served as a co-instructor of the industrial short course “Chemistry of Catalytic Processes” for such organizations as Alcoa, Amoco Chemical, ARCO Chemical, Union Carbide, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Exxon and LaRoche Industries.

He is associate editor of the AIChE Journal and is an editorial board member of a number of journals and publications, including the Journal of Catalysis, the Journal of the American Vacuum Society B, Catalysis Letters, Topics in Catalysis, Topics in Chemical Engineering and Catalysis Communications.

Barteau is a member of such professional societies as the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, American Chemical Society, Materials Research Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science and Sigma Xi.

Once Barteau’s term as chairperson is complete, he is looking forward to being able to devote more attention to research and to teaching. In addition, he is interested in making contributions on larger questions of policy, having served on the National Research Council steering committee that recently addressed “Challenges in the Chemical Sciences in the 21st Century.”