Liberatore receives award at AIChE annual meeting

By Avalon Schnelker
English ’27

Matthew Liberatore, Ph.D., chair of Trine University’s McKetta Department of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering, received a national award and gave several presentations during the annual meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), held Nov. 1-4 in Boston.

Dr. Liberatore received the 2025 David Himmelblau Award for Innovations in Computer-Based Chemical Engineering Education. The award recognizes an individual or group for making new and novel contributions to computer aids for chemical engineering education. The award citation reads: For his innovative, fully-interactive, web-based chemical engineering textbooks with auto-graded, randomized problems as well as quantifying student engagement and success.

He also gave an invited presentation based on his 2024 award for Award For Excellence in Engineering Education Research. His presentation was titled, “Beyond the Textbook: Data-Driven Research, Interactive Learning, and Creating Creative Problems.”

“I tried to mix gratitude for my students and colleagues co-authoring the engineering education research papers over the last decade as well as overcoming failure,” he said.

Dr. Liberatore also presented talks or posters on video-inspired problems written by students, generative AI or both; high reading participation in a first engineering thermodynamics course; chemical engineering summer school; and chemical engineering faculty development.

Alexandra Davidson, a current Trine MBA student and 2024 chemical engineering graduate, co-authored one of these presentations.

The AIChE annual meeting invites chemical engineering professionals and educators from around the world to share their findings, research, innovations and advancements in their field.

At the 2024 AIChE annual meeting, in addition to receiving the Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Research, Dr. Liberatore was named an AIChE Fellow, recognizing superior attainments, valuable contributions, and service toward chemical engineering.