Join us on February 26, 2026, for the installation of Tom Truskett as the Vennema Professor of Chemical Engineering. This special event will recognize Truskett’s outstanding contributions to research, education and service in the field of chemical engineering, and will formally celebrate his appointment to this endowed professorship within the department.

Thomas Truskett’s academic journey includes a B.S. from the University of Texas at Austin (1996) and a Ph.D. from Princeton University (2001), both in Chemical Engineering. Following postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Francisco, he joined the faculty in Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Over the next twenty-three years, Dr. Truskett supervised 28 Ph.D. students and 15 postdoctoral scholars and served as the Chemical Engineering Department Chair from 2013-2021. Highlights of his leadership include recruiting 8 chemical engineering faculty members and helping raise more than $28M to complete the Challenge for McKetta, supporting chemical engineering education and research. In Fall 2025, he joined the University of Michigan as a professor of Chemical Engineering and a core faculty member in the Biointerfaces Institute.

Truskett’s research is at the nexus of molecular thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and materials science. He has co-authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications on the behavior of soft condensed matter, including biomolecular solutions, colloidal dispersions and assemblies, gels, and glassy solids. His work has advanced understanding of how properties of soft materials derive from their structure across length scales, informing design strategies for applications ranging from optical materials to biotherapeutics.

His research accomplishments have been recognized by election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Physical Society (APS), and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineers (AIMBE). He is a recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship, a National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award, TAMEST’s O’Donnell Award for Engineering, AIChE’s Allan P. Colburn Award, and the Impact Award from AIChE’s Computational Molecular Science and Engineering Forum (CoMSEF).