The lectureship is named in honor of the late Donald L. Katz who was a Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan for many years. Dr. Katz was an inspiring teacher, outstanding leader and imaginative investigator in the field of Chemical Engineering and Petroleum Technology.

This event is open to all U-M faculty, students and staff.

Speaker biography:
Greg Stephanopoulos is the W.H. Dow Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at MIT, and Instructor of Bioengineering at Harvard Medical School. He received his BS degree from the National Technical University of Athens, MS from the U. of Florida and PhD from the U. of Minnesota, all in Chemical Engineering. He taught at Caltech between 1978-85, after which he was appointed Professor of ChE at MIT. The primary focus of his research for the past 3 decades has been on metabolic engineering, the engineering of microbes for the production of fuels and chemicals. He has co-authored or –edited 5 books, more than 450 papers and 60 patents and supervised more than 140 graduate and post-doctoral students. He co-founded the journal Metabolic Engineering, and served as co-editor-in chief and Editorial Board member of 10 scientific journals. He has also been on the Advisory Boards of 5 ChE departments. For his research and educational contributions, Stephanopoulos has been recognized with numerous awards, such as: Dreyfus award, Excellence in Teaching Award-Caltech, AIChE Technical Achievement Award, PYI from NSF, AIChE-FPBE Division Award, Marvin Johnson Award of ACS, Merck Award in Metabolic Engineering, the R.H. Wilhelm Award in Chemical Reaction Engineering of AIChE, Amgen Award in Biochemical Engineering. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE, 2003), Corresponding Member of the Academy of Athens (2011) and Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). He has Honorary Doctorate Degrees (doctor technices honoris causa) from the Technical University of Denmark (2005), the National Technical University of Athens (2015) and the Technical University of Dortmund (2019). In 2007 he won the C. Thom Award from SIM and the Founders Award from AIChE and in 2010 the ACS E. V. Murphree Award in Industrial and Engineering Chemistry and the George Washington Carver Award of BIO. In 2011 he was selected as the Eni Prize winner for Renewable and non-Conventional Energy. He is an AAAS and AIChE Fellow. He was the 2014 recipient of the 2014 Walker award from AIChE. In 2013 he was awarded the John Fritz Medal of the American Association of Engineering Societies, in 2016 he won the Eric and Sheila Samson $1m Prime Minister Prize (Israel) and was recognized with the Novozymes Prize. Professor Stephanopoulos has served the professional organization of Chemical Engineers as chairman of Division 15, member of the Board of Directors and Chairman of the AIChE Society for Biological Engineering. In 2014, he was elected as 2016 President of AIChE.

An invitation-only reception will be hosted after the Donald L. Katz Lectureship. Reception details will be sent via email, if you have questions about the reception, please contact Lori Bolchalk (bolchalk@umich.edu).