Rigoberto Advincula, the UT-ORNL Governor’s Chair of Advanced Nanostructured Materials, has been selected by the American Chemical Society as a 2026 Industrial and Engineering Chemistry (I&EC) Division Fellow. 

The I&EC Division Fellow is awarded to a chemist or engineer based on significant, innovative contributions to the areas in which they have published within applied chemistry and/or chemical engineering. 

Advincula’s areas of expertise include organic and polymer chemistry, coatings, nanomaterials, flow chemistry and reaction engineering, additive manufacturing, and biomaterials. He has led major projects, including a machine learning-enabled flow-chemistry lab at ORNL and advanced nanocomposite manufacturing with the US Department of Energy. 

“This is a proud moment for me with the ACS and I&EC Division, where the work we do also has a lot of applications and relevance to industry,” Advincula said. “For the most part, I owe this honor to the many collaborators in industry and to the students and former group members who contributed to these collaborations. The Division leads the way in applied science and engineering, and now in the application of AI/ML workflows in chemistry and chemical engineering. We hope to contribute more through work at ORNL and UT.” 

Advincula is one of two Fellows selected for the 2026 class along with Larry Dalton, a professor at the University of Washington who is considered a pioneer in organic electronics and photonics. 

Advincula’s I&EC Fellow selection is his seventh. He is also a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the American Chemical Society, the Materials Research Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and the Thermal Analysis Society. 

Contact

Rhiannon Potkey (rpotkey@utk.edu)