Dr. Isaac K. Gamwo serves as the 2024 Chairman of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Separations Division and is a Fellow of AIChE. He previously held leadership roles within the division, including 1st Vice-Chair (2023), 2nd Vice-Chair (2022), and Director (2017-2021).
At the United States Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in Pittsburgh, PA, Dr. Gamwo leads research efforts focused on high-temperature, high-pressure complex fluid properties within NETL’s Research and Innovation Center. Currently, he is directing a multi-institutional, multidisciplinary study on the thermodynamic effects of impurities on the phase behavior of dense-phase CO₂ in pipelines. This collaborative project involves partners from NETL, ExxonMobil, DNV, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and faculty from the University of Pittsburgh. Previously, Dr. Gamwo led the Equation of State (EOS) research group at NETL and served as Task Technical Coordinator.
Under his leadership, his EOS research group was a finalist in the 2014 Institution of Chemical Engineers' (IChemE) global research competition held in the UK, an event that recognizes chemical engineering innovation worldwide.
Dr. Gamwo has received numerous accolades, including two Federal Executive Board GOLD Awards: the 2011 Outstanding Professional Employee in Science or Medical Fields and the 2002 Rookie Gold Award. In 2017, he was honored with the Joseph N. Cannon Award for Excellence in Chemical Engineering by the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) in recognition of his three decades of research contributions and his academic service at Tuskegee University and the University of Akron.
A licensed professional engineer and a principal U.S inventor, Dr. Gamwo has also served as affiliated graduate faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he co-advised a Ph.D. student (2014-2017), and as co-chair for a doctoral committee at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Chicago. He has held full-time academic appointments as an Assistant Professor at both the University of Akron (Akron, OH) and Tuskegee University (Tuskegee, AL).
Dr. Gamwo holds both an M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He is credited on three books: he is co-author of Design and Understanding of Fluidized Bed Reactors (Verlag, 2009) and co-editor of Ultraclean Transportation Fuels (Oxford University Press, 2007) and Solid–Liquid Separation Technologies: Applications for Produced Water (CRC Press, 2022). He has over 150 publications and presentations to his credit and has served on various international scientific committees and technical journal editorial boards.