UK’s Bhattacharyya Wins SEC Faculty Achievement Award

Dibakar Bhattacharyya, professor of chemical and materials engineering in the UK College of Engineering, has been named winner of the 2021 SEC Faculty Achievement Award for the University of Kentucky, the SEC announced on Monday.

“I’m very fortunate to be on faculty at the University of Kentucky, and it’s a great honor that among many outstanding faculty members at UK, I have been selected for the 2021 SEC Faculty Achievement Award,” Bhattacharyya said. “Teaching, research, scholarship and societal service are inextricably linked for me, and UK provides a strong environment for faculty collaborations among different disciplines.”

Bhattacharyya has been a fixture in UK Engineering for more than 50 years and is renowned for his research, which focuses on incorporating life sciences materials with synthetic membranes for filtering and producing clean water.

Currently, the director of UK’s Center of Membrane Sciences, known to friends and colleagues as “DB,” is contributing his decades of membrane expertise to help address the spread of COVID-19. He has the concept and the means to develop a medical face mask that would capture and deactivate the virus on contact.

A fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Bhattacharyya has nine U.S. patents with his students and received Kentucky’s highest education award in three different decades. Additionally, he has 34 book chapters and two books to his credit, along with hundreds of refereed publications.

“Dr. Bhattacharyya has had a seminal impact on the fields of both environmental engineering and membrane science in his more than 50 years at the University of Kentucky,” David Blackwell, provost at the University of Kentucky, said. “This institution is fortunate to have someone with his level of expertise, serving as a catalyst for solutions to the most challenging questions of our time.”

To receive an SEC achievement award the faculty member must have achieved the rank of full professor; have a record of extraordinary teaching, particularly at the undergraduate level; and have a record of research that is recognized nationally and/or internationally. University winners will receive a $5,000 honorarium from the SEC.

“I consider the most important aspect of teaching is to enhance creative thinking among students and their ability to solve open ended problems," Bhattacharyya said. "Through various research funding from NSF, NIEHS and industries, UK has provided the right environment to broaden the classroom instruction to hands-on lab research activities for various undergraduate students. I thoroughly enjoy being an educator here — at one of the best universities in the world.”

Bhattacharyya will become UK’s campus nominee for the SEC Professor of the Year Award, which will be announced in April.