Arthur Ragauskas | AIChE

Arthur Ragauskas

Professor/Governor’s Chair in Biorefining
Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Arthur Ragauskas held the first Fulbright Chair in Alternative Energy and is a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Academy of Wood Science and TAPPI. In 2014, he assumed a Governor’s Chair for Biorefining based in University of Tennessee’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, with a complementary appointment in the UT Institute of Agriculture’s Department of Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries and serves in the Energy and Environmental Sciences Directorate, Biosciences Division, at ORNL. His research program is directed at understanding and exploiting innovative sustainable bioresources.  This multifaceted program is targeted to develop new and improved applications for nature’s premiere renewable biopolymers for biofuels, biopower, and bio-based materials and chemicals.  His research program has been sponsored by NSF, USDA, DOE, GA Traditional Industry Program, a consortium of industry partners, and several fellowship programs which is summarized in 535 publications. His Fulbright sponsored activities at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden were focused on the forest biorefinery and new biofuel conversion technologies for lignocellulosics. Currently, Dr. Ragauskas manages a research group of graduate students, postdoctoral research fellows, a research scientist, and visiting scientists.  He is the recipient of the 2014 TAPPI Gunnar Nicholson Gold Medal Award, the 2014 ACS Affordable Green Chemistry Award, 2017 AIChE Green Processing Award, 2017 Academia Distinguished Service Award, 2019 AIChE Chase Award, and his students and postdocs have won several awards, including the ACS graduate research award, ORNL UT-Battelle Award, and the ORNL Supplementary Performance Award