NYU Tandon Professor Accepts Leadership Posts in the Chemical Engineering World
Ryan Hartman Elected Programming Chair of Major Division of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers
Assistant Professor Ryan L. Hartman, who oversees the Flow Chemistry with Microsystems Laboratory at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, has been elected to a five-year term as the programming chair of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Catalysis and Reaction Engineering (CRE) division, the largest subgroup in the national organization.
Hartman’s duties will include serving on the CRE Executive Board, setting the agenda for the division’s sessions at the AIChE annual meeting and ensuring that the 70 CRE sessions held during the event feature high-quality research with the correct balance of core topics, current themes, and emerging trends.
Hartman was elected on the strength of his service to the AIChE as well as for his reputation in both academia and industry. His area of expertise involves continuous-flow technology, which streamlines the chemical reaction and purification process safely, cleanly, and cost-effectively and is generally employed for large-scale industrial purposes. Using continuous-flow micro-reactors, Hartman is bringing those advantages to laboratories, and his theoretical models promise enormous value in the pharmaceutical industry, energy sector, and elsewhere. Working “in flow” in the lab ultimately makes it much easier for manufacturers to scale up the process and could potentially expedite the discovery, development, and manufacture of fine chemicals, materials, and pharmaceuticals.
In addition to his AIChE election, Hartman was recently appointed to the editorial advisory board of Reaction Chemistry & Engineering, a publication of the Royal Society of Chemistry. The journal, launched this year, is targeted to those working at the interface of reaction chemistry and reaction engineering and covers research from fundamental molecular synthesis development to optimizing large-scale chemical reactions. The inaugural issue (January 2016) featured Hartman’s paper “Influence of Water on the Deprotonation and the Ionic Mechanisms of a Heck Alkynylation and Its Resultant E-factors.”
“It is an enormous honor to assume the mantle of CRE programming chair from my colleague John Kitchen of Carnegie Mellon University, who has performed so capably over the last five years,” Hartman said. “He has been at the forefront of steering our field in exciting and important directions, and I hope to do the same. To also be considered worthy of an advisory position by the Royal Society of Chemistry has made 2016 a doubly notable year for me.”
“NYU Tandon is proud to have Professor Hartman on our faculty,” Dean Katepalli R. Sreenivasan said. “He is fast becoming a towering figure in the world of chemical engineering, and our students are benefitting from working alongside someone of his academic stature, industry experience, and vital research interests.”
Hartman completed his postdoctoral research in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research has been featured in Chemical & Engineering Technology, Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, the Journal of Flow Chemistry, Organic Process Research & Development, and other peer-reviewed publications. He is co-holder of a dozen U.S. patents. Before coming to NYU Tandon, Hartman was an assistant professor and Reichhold-Shumaker fellow in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. He was recently honored as visiting assistant professor of the Institut de Chimie de la Matière Condensée de Bordeaux CNRS, Université de Bordeaux. He is also a winner of the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, which supports promising young researchers, and member of the National Academy of Inventors.
The NYU Tandon School of Engineering dates to 1854, when the NYU School of Civil Engineering and Architecture as well as the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute (widely known as Brooklyn Poly) were founded. Their successor institutions merged in January 2014 to create a comprehensive school of education and research in engineering and applied sciences, rooted in a tradition of invention, innovation and entrepreneurship. In addition to programs at its main campus in downtown Brooklyn, it is closely connected to engineering programs in NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai, and it operates business incubators in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn.
