Trine chemical engineering department chair receives national honors

Trine University Chemical Engineering Faculty and Department Chair, Matthew Liberatore, Ph.D., received two national awards during the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Annual Meeting, hosted in San Diego, California, this fall.

Liberatore was named an AIChE Fellow, which recognizes superior attainments, valuable contributions, and service toward chemical engineering.

Fellow is AIChE’s highest grade of membership. Candidates for AIChE Fellow are nominated by their peers. They must have significant chemical engineering experience and demonstrate significant service to the profession and professional society.

In addition to this milestone achievement, Liberatore was awarded the 2024 Excellence in Engineering Education Research Award by the AIChE Education Division for his impactful and innovative research related to learning analytics for interactive, web-based textbooks and mixed methods studies of problem-solving using student-written, video-inspired problems.

This award recognizes individuals for outstanding research in education, focusing on chemical engineering pedagogy, methods, applications and assessment.

Throughout his career, Liberatore has published 17 journal papers, 26 conference papers, presented 22 invited talks related to engineering education research, and led multiple engineering education research grants. He also has authored three different interactive, online engineering textbooks.

“I want to thank my students, including numerous undergraduates completing their first research project, and collaborators for helping me win this award,” said Liberatore. “I am very blessed to have such great support from my family and colleagues throughout my career.”