Matteo Pasquali, A.J. Hartsook Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE), professor of chemistry and of materials science and nanoengineering, and director of the Carbon Hub, has been honored with a 2020 Rice Presidential Award for Mentoring.
The award is given to faculty members who demonstrate strong commitment to mentoring graduate or undergraduate students.
Pasquali joined the Rice faculty in 2000 after earning his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1999, followed by a year there as a postdoctoral researcher in polymer physics. He was promoted to full professor in 2008. He served as co-director of the Carbon NanoTechnology Laboratory in the Richard E. Smalley Institute and as a member of the Faculty Senate, and currently is chair of the Department of Chemistry.
Pasquali and his wife, Marie-Nathalie Contou-Carrere, Rice’s research adviser for industry partners, served a five-year term as Masters of Lovett College.
Soon after coming to Rice, Pasquali founded a laboratory devoted to soft materials which evolved into a center for the scalable manufacturing and application of carbon nanotubes. As principal adviser Pasquali has graduated 22 doctoral students, 14 master’s students, 24 postdoctoral researchers and more than 80 undergraduates in ChBE, chemistry, applied physics, materials science, mechanical engineering and bioengineering.
Students advised by Pasquali have gone on to start their own laboratories at MIT, Texas A&M, Auburn, University of Pennsylvania, University of Connecticut, Monash University, Seoul National University and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, and have started three companies. He currently advises twelve doctoral students, two postdoctoral researchers and five undergraduates.
Pasquali was awarded the NSF Career Award in 2001. In 2009, he won the Graduate Student Association Faculty Teaching and Mentoring Award. In 2014, he won the Paul Schlack award for man-made fibers, and together with his collaborators, was awarded the Goradia Innovation Grand Prize. In 2016, he received the Herschel Rich Innovation Award.
He has published more than 200 scholarly articles and holds 12 U.S. patents. According to Google Scholar, Pasquali’s publications have been cited more than 13,500 times and his h-index is 61.
Pasquali is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society.