Tilton to receive American Chemical Society Award

Bob Tilton, Chevron professor of chemical engineering, will receive the 2024 American Chemical Society (ACS) Award in Colloid Chemistry.

The award recognizes outstanding scientific contributions to colloid chemistry. Tilton will be honored at an award ceremony March 19, 2024, in conjunction with ACS Spring 2024 in New Orleans. The ACS Award in Colloid Chemistry is sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive.

The citation for Tilton's award reads: "For advancing fundamental understanding of colloidal and interfacial phenomena involving compositional and structural complexity, especially multicomponent fluids and nanoscale polymer brushes with controlled architectures."

Tilton says it is particularly meaningful to receive the same award as his Ph.D. advisor at Stanford University, Alice P. Gast, who was honored with the 2006 ACS Award in Colloid Chemistry.

Tilton's research addresses problems in complex fluid interfacial phenomena. He is recognized for contributions in three main areas. In the first, Tilton has advanced colloid and interface science research beyond idealized single component model systems. For phenomena that are well-understood in pristine environments, Tilton is interested in how they work in realistic multicomponent mixtures. His efforts to understand multicomponent interactions are relevant to industry for complex fluid formulations, like stabilizing colloidal suspensions or producing colloidal gels in fluid products.

A second theme in Tilton's research is engineering compositional complexity and polymer structural complexity to achieve new levels of control over interfacial composition, conformation, and interactions. Tilton's research group created nanoparticulate polymer brushes that serve as high efficiency emulsifiers.

In the third area, Tilton is known for transferring concepts between application domains to develop new solutions for technological challenges. Environmental nanotechnology is one application supported by this work. Tilton has translated drug delivery technologies to more efficiently apply agrochemicals and remediate contaminated aquifers.

Tilton is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society and a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Within Carnegie Mellon's Department of Chemical Engineering, he serves as director of the Center for Complex Fluids Engineering and director of undergraduate education.

For media inquiries, please contact Lauren Smith at lsmith2@andrew.cmu.edu.