IIT Faculty Member Hamid Arastoopour Receives Henry R. Linden Endowed Chair in Chemical and Environmental Engineering
Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is pleased to announce that faculty member and alumnus Hamid Arastoopour has received the Henry R. Linden Endowed Chair in Chemical and Environmental Engineering. The professorship was established in 2000 by Roger W. Sant, the co-founder of the AES Corporation, to honor and recognize the accomplishments of Linden, an IIT professor, the director of the university's Energy and Power Center and the co-founder of the Gas Research Institute (GRI). The award preserves and expands Linden’s legacy at IIT by supporting the teaching and research of an individual who will assume a leadership role in industrial ecology and design for the environment.
Arastoopour joined IIT’s chemical engineering department in 1985 and is currently a professor and the director of Wanger Institute for Sustainable Energy Research (WISER). An interdisciplinary research and education center, WISER incorporates contributions from engineering, architecture, the sciences, psychology, law, business and design into the research and education structure, leading the way in confronting the energy challenges facing the world today and in the future. Arastoopour served as chairman of the chemical engineering department from 1989 to 2003 and as dean of Armour College of Engineering from 2003 to 2008.
Currently serving on the editorial board of Powder Technology Journal, Arastoopour’s main research expertise is in the area of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) of multiphase flow and particle technology—an area motivated by energy and environmentally related applications and documented in more than 100 publications and 12 U.S. patents. Arastoopour has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Donald Q. Kern Award in Heat Transfer and Energy Conversion, the Fluor Daniel Lectureship in Fluidization and Fluid/Particle Systems, the Ernest W. Thiele Award and the Fluidization Process Recognition Award, all from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), of which he is a fellow. He also received the University Excellence in Teaching Award from IIT in 1992 and the IIT Alumni Service Award in 2008.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in gas and chemical engineering from Abadan Institute of Technology in Iran in 1973, Arastoopour earned a master’s degree (’75) and a Ph.D. (’78), both in gas and chemical engineering, from IIT.
The primary donors for the Henry R. Linden Professorship include Roger W. Sant, the Linda and Ken Lay Family Foundation, the Commonwealth Edison Company, El Paso Energy Foundation, William T. McCormick, CMS Energy, Dennis W. Bakke, Charles W. Finkl and the Jack & Annis Bowen Foundation.
Founded in 1890, IIT is a Ph.D.-granting university with more than 7,300 students in engineering, sciences, architecture, psychology, design, humanities, business and law. IIT's interprofessional, technology-focused curriculum is designed to advance knowledge through research and scholarship, to cultivate invention improving the human condition, and to prepare students from throughout the world for a life of professional achievement, service to society, and individual fulfillment. Visit www.iit.edu.
