(211b) Who Is Rich Noble?

Professor Richard Noble is an extremely prolific award-winning researcher in membrane materials, membrane reactors, and membrane separations. However, this description covers only three of Rich’s many facets. The purpose of this talk is to uncover many more facets to uncover the brilliance of the diamond.

Rich was an outstanding student at Stevens Institute of Technology who found time to play baseball on the Institute’s baseball team and to take four graduate level classes while an undergraduate. He is one of the few ChE professors who worked at the BS grunt level in industry (National Starch and Chemical) and who is a registered Professional Engineer. After 2 ½ years Rich decided to try teaching physics and chemistry at a boarding school in England. His students convinced Rich that he enjoyed teaching but would enjoy it more if his students were more motivated. Teaching motivated chemical engineering students instead of bored rich English students would be more rewarding, so he applied to U.S. graduate programs. He chose to attend graduate school at the University of California-Davis.

At UC Davis Rich found that the environmental research of Prof. Alan Jackman and Jackman’s progressive attitude complimentary with his interests and did his Ph.D. research with Prof. Jackman. To study the effect of electrical power plant discharges on river temperatures, Rich developed models that were calibrated with field data from the Mattole River basin in California. The Mattole River had no dams or power plants and thus provided data on natural temperature variability. Rich coauthored a series of four papers on measurement techniques and water temperature profiles with Prof. Jackman culminating with a twenty-page paper in J. Environmental Systems (1979-1980). In 1976 Rich started as a new assistant professor at the University of Wyoming. He continued his research on heat transfer and temperature variations in rivers and lakes.

Because Rich had gone to graduate school because he wanted to teach, he was very disappointed when his teaching ratings were less than stellar. Although 1977 started on a down note, the second half of the year was marvelous. Wyoming nominated Rich to go the 1977 ASEE ChE Division Summer School in Snowmass, Colorado. At this meeting he learned better teaching methods from the legendary Prof. Jim Stice. He also met the co-authors of this paper. In November of 1977 on a flight from Denver to Spokane he sat next to a young lady named Susan Richardson. They were married in December 1979.

Using the methods learned at the summer school, his teaching improved and Rich started to win and continued to win teaching awards. While at Wyoming he also won the ASEE Dow Outstanding Young Faculty Award and the ASEE Campus Activity Coordinator Award.

Despite these successes or perhaps because teaching awards and educational contributions were discounted in the reward structure, in 1981 Rich decided to reboot his career and become more research active. He took a job with the National Bureau of Standards (NBS, currently the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST) in Boulder to work in a new program on membranes. Almost immediately, Rich became an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder so that he could continue teaching.

Rich became involved in theory and calculations for facilitated transport in membrane systems. His first Ph.D. graduate, Doug Way, did definitive work on facilitated transport. Rich’s interest in facilitated transport eventually led to an interest in experimental measurements and to the development of new processes.

In 1987 Rich moved to the University of Colorado Boulder as a Chemical Engineering Research Professor to work with Prof. Bill Krantz to attract an NSF research center to the University. In 1990 Rich became co-director of the NSF I/U CRC Membrane Applied Science and Technology Center (MAST) and became a Professor of Chemical Engineering.

During his work with NBS and his early years at the University of Colorado Boulder Rich developed three defining characteristics of his research. First, his research is very collaborative and involves industrial researchers, undergraduate and graduate students, post-docs, and professors from other disciplines. Second, Rich took to heart the word “Applied” in the center’s title. He realized that the companies who support the center are interested in the fundamental results, but they are even more interested in how those results can be applied to solve their pressing problems. Third, Rich has been fearless is attacking new problems despite a lack of background. Rich became an expert at learning fundamental new knowledge, applying it to practical problems, developing novel solutions, and then helping to apply them in industry. Thus, his membrane and other separations research is unusual and well known for leading to industrial applications.

Because of Rich’s extensive collaboration, his more than 350 published research papers and 87 patents (either issued or pending) are in a wide range of areas. Most of his papers and patents involve membranes; these include synthesis of novel membranes, separations of liquid (pervaporation) and gases, facilitated transport, membrane scale-up, hybrid processes, membrane reactors, and mathematical modeling. These membranes were composed of liquid crystal polymers, ionic liquids, mixed matrices, zeolites, polymers, carbon nanotubes, and supported liquids. In addition to his membrane research, Rich has also published papers in photocatalysis, adsorption, catalysis, organic cage frameworks, and electrochemical pumping and separations.

Rich has opened his lab to many undergraduate researchers. Involving undergraduates in research is not particularly difficult, but getting them to do world-class research that is publishable in the best journals in the discipline is very difficult. Rich is an expert at motivating undergraduates to reach world-class quality in their research, and over forty of his publications include an undergraduate student co-author. The majority of these students then went to graduate school.

Professor Noble has also shown an outstanding ability to integrate knowledge. His editorship of six books includes the monumental 718-page handbook Membrane Separations Technology: Principles and Applications, co-edited with Alex Stern. He returned to environmental applications when he co-authored the textbook “Principles of Chemical Separations with Environmental Applications” with his former graduate student Dr. Patricia Terry (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Rich found that environmental problems motivate students to learn separations.

There is a myth that outstanding researchers never have time for students. This is certainly not true of Rich Noble. An outstanding teacher who has won many local and national teaching awards, he is able to illustrate the importance of separations based on his broad industrial, government and academic experience.

Rich is very service oriented and has won four service awards. He chaired the ACS IEC Division’s Separations subdivision and the AIChE Separations Division during their formative periods. He has also chaired many ACS and AIChE separations symposia and was editor of the review journal Separation and Purification Methods. Rich is proudest of his community service working with Voices for Children, a non-profit Boulder agency that works with juveniles caught in the legal system due to abuse and/or neglect. He served for several years as a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) to speak in the best interests of the children in court. For several additional years he served on the Board and served a term as president of the Board. For these and other community service activities he was awarded the AIChE Institute Service Award, which is often not awarded for lack of excellent candidates.

REFERENCE: Falconer, J. L., “Rich Noble of the University of Colorado Boulder,” Chemical Engineering Education, 53 (3), 162-168 (Summer 2018).