Jeffrey McCutcheon is the General Electric Professor of Advanced Manufacturing in the Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Department at the University of Connecticut. He received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Dayton and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Yale University. For nearly 20 years, he has pioneered work in membrane based separations, notably in the areas of osmotic processes and membrane formation. He has raised over $12M to support research in the areas of forward osmosis, membrane distillation, nanofiltration, reverse osmosis, pervaporation, vapor permeation, organic solvent nanofiltration and additive manufacturing for membranes. He has published over 100 refereed publications and has several patents on membrane technology. He has served the separations community as a Director for both the AIChE Separations Division and the North American Membrane Society (NAMS) and recently served as President of NAMS. He currently serves as the Deputy Topic Area lead for Materials & Manufacturing Topic Area in the National Alliance for Water Innovation, the Department of Energy’s $100M “Water Hub” dedicated to supporting the development of desalination technology in the United States.
He has received numerous awards including the 3M Nontenured Faculty Award, the Solvay Advanced Polymers Young Faculty Award, The DuPont Young Faculty Award, and the FRI/John G. Kunesh Award from the AIChE Separations Division. He was the winner of the 2019 Global Water Summit Water Technology Idol competition for his work on 3D printed membranes and was named a quarter- and semi-finalist of the American Made Challenges Solar Desalination Prize from the Department of Energy for his work on ceramic membranes for solar-driven membrane distillation. He was inducted into the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering in 2021. In 2017, he was named the Executive Director of Fraunhofer USA Center for Energy Innovation and served for 3 years before taking the Center to its now independent status as the Connecticut Center for Applied Separations Technologies (CCAST). CCAST is dedicated to identifying opportunities to implement membrane technology into various industrial processes in order to lower energy use, reduce carbon footprint, limit waste, and prevent adverse environmental and health impacts.