The research groups of Rice University Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering professors Michael S. Wong and Haotian Wang each received 2020 AIChE Annual Awards from the South Texas Section.
The group directed by Wong, the Tina and Sunit Patel Professor in Molecular Nanotechnology and chair of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, received the 2019 Best Fundamental Paper Award.
The paper titled, "Design of a Pd−Au Nitrite Reduction Catalyst by Identifying and Optimizing Active Ensembles" which was published in ACS Catalysis 2019, No. 9, pp. 7957−7966, was authored by Wong, Hao Li, Sujin Guo, Kihyun Shin, and Graeme Henkelman.
Wang's group, which includes Chuan Xia, Yang Xia, Peng Zhu and Lei Fan, received the 2019 Best Applied Paper Award for "Direct electrosynthesis of pure aqueous H2O2 solutions up to 20% by weight using a solid electrolyte."
The group's paper was published in Science Vol 11, October 2019, No. 366, pp. 226–231. Wang is the William Marsh Rice Trustee Chair and assistant professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.